


Four Days on a Farm in Kansas

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:22:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce comes to spend a few days at the Kents' farm. Clark tries to be all things to all people. Bruce is kind of an asshole. Does any of this really need saying? Featuring: tractors, misogyny, embarrassing parents, Ikea, awkward barn sex. </p><p>This story is entirely <a href="http://runkirya.tumblr.com/">Runkirya</a>'s fault, because I haven't been able to stop thinking about a farm fic since she posted <a href="http://runkirya.tumblr.com/post/65991438698/bruce-and-clark-lets-stop-arguing-over">this</a> and <a href="http://runkirya.tumblr.com/post/66180505710/so-the-conversation-moved-into-the-barn-this">this</a>. </p><p>I'm posting this as individual chapters over the next few days, but it is not a work in progress; the final work is completed. You are welcome to read in the installment plan now, or wait a few days.</p><p>Also, I am labeling every chapter explicit even though there may be some chapters that do not include explicit sexual content, since the work as a whole is smutty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They froze at the creak of the bedspring. It was a small twin mattress, at least twenty years old, and it was not designed for the weight of two grown men, both of them solidly built, making out on top of it. 

"It's okay," Clark whispered. "They're downstairs, and they sleep like the dead."

"It's not your parents I'm worried about," Bruce said into his neck.

"They're sleeping too." They had been side by side on the mattress, but Clark had just rolled them so Bruce was on top, which was what had caused the creak. He needed more friction, and he was afraid this would be over before it started if he had rolled Bruce underneath him and begun grinding on top of him. 

"You sure about that?"

"Sure I'm sure." In order not to make a liar of himself he did actually listen for a second to Kon and Kara, in the two front bedrooms. Kon was wheezing slightly in his sleep, and though Kara was silent, her deep even breathing and slowed heartrate told him she slept still. "Come on, it's—it's fine." He dug his fingers into Bruce's ass and thrust up into Bruce's hips, because he had never been this hard in his life, and oh, oh God he wanted to come. He wondered if that was going to be okay.

Bruce was making this soft choking noise in his throat while Clark rubbed, so evidently it was more than okay. They hadn't taken off a stitch of clothing. Bruce had started kissing him again. How could he not have known what a good kisser Bruce was? He should have guessed that one. Bruce's hands were roaming too. Bruce was moving back and forth, matching his movements, just a slow grind and rub. 

If you had told him three days ago he was going to be making out with Bruce in his childhood bedroom while they tried desperately to come without waking the whole house, he would have laughed in your face. He tried to figure out when this had become inevitable, what had made this happen, and couldn't. Probably had something to do with the fact that there was very little blood left in his brain right now, because he honestly had not known that getting quite this hard was a possibility. 

Three days ago, he would have said you were crazy.

* * *

"So can I ask you a question?"

Clark tightened the gasket and grimaced, which with any luck looked like a grimace at the gasket. He wiped his wrench and his brow, and bent back over the engine block. "Fire away."

"It's mainly about, you know. . . well, it's. . . romance, and things like that."

 _Sure, hang on a sec while I beat my head in with this wrench_ , Clark wanted to say. Instead he kept at the gasket. "Yep," he said. 

"How do you know what's. . . I mean, is it possible to have any way of knowing what's. . . to really figure out what's. . ."

 _Spit it out or you're the one I'll beat with the wrench_ , he thought. "Normal," came the embarrassed sputter, finally. "Is there—can you know that, really? What's normal, for. . . us?"

Clark swallowed the "us" with good grace, and took his time wiping the gasket head. It was a glorious late fall day, when the blue of the Kansas sky seemed like something somebody had made up, something impossible—like it was arcing down to the plains, an inverted bowl of blue bending to kiss the prairie. It was the sort of day nothing could go wrong on. He had a long peaceful morning ahead of him doing nothing but working with his hands, repairing the ancient tractor that neither he nor his father could bear to part with, and whose cranky presence was as much a fixture of farm life as Ma's equally cranky biscuits. 

Long and peaceful, that was, until Kon had decided to perch on the fence and watch. Clark bent to the canister of oil and tipped the slender nozzle into the pan, as gently as he could. She didn't take kindly to flooding.

"Just to clarify," he said. "We're talking about sex, right?"

Kon came close to blushing. Pretty surprising, considering his assumption had been Kon and M'gann had had a lot of it, last year. "Yeah," he said, eyes on the tires. "That's—yeah." 

"Mm." Clark set the canister down. "And you want to know what's normal."

"For. . . us, yeah. For Kryptonians. Well, people with Kryptonian in them. Half Kryptonian, anyway."

Clark gave him a wry smile. "You're pretty damn Kryptonian, kid."

Kon's half-blush was a full one now. Absurd how much that pleased the boy. Absurd how often he forgot what pleased him, from one visit to the next. "It's just that I. . . I don't have any real way of knowing if I'm. . ."

"Normal," Clark supplied, and the kid nodded. "Well, I'll tell you. Unless you suddenly develop romantic notions about old Cora here, you are pretty much guaranteed to be within the bounds of normal sexuality. For humans and Kryptonians, for that matter. Neither species is much into machinery."

He was nodding, like he was thinking. "And what about. . ."

 _Fuck's sake, spit it out_ , but he kept his gaze steady, and focused on the engine. 

"Do Kryptonians like some things different than humans like?" It was like he had saved up all his courage for the whole year and spent it all in one sentence. It took a bit of super-hearing to unravel it, because it came out as dokryptonianslikesomethingsdifferentthanhumanslike and was a little difficult to decipher. 

"Sure," he said.

"Like what?"

 _Well this would be a really good time to think of something, Clark_. He tapped the wrench idly on his knee. "Okay, dating," he said. "Humans do a lot of dating. Kryptonians aren't as much into that. They tend to bond quickly and deeply with a single partner, and have—trouble moving on from that. Humans can detach and re-attach with a bit more ease." 

Kon made a noise like _hnnh_ in his throat. "Martians too, evidently," he said, and Clark ignored the remark. He worked in silence for a few more minutes, adjusting one or two intake valves. Kon had gone quiet. 

"What about," he began. His voice was so soft this time no one but Clark could have heard, and something told him everything before was a screen, and this was the real question. "What about liking someone the same gender as you." 

Clark just kept working, and didn't turn around. He gave Kon a minute or two to breathe around the question. "That's normal, too," he said. Maybe the kid would leave it at that. 

"Did—do Kryptonians think that's at all. . . you know, like some humans do?"

 _Adjectives. Nouns. Parts of speech. Complete your sentences, kid!_ He wiped his hands, needlessly. "No, Kryptonians don't have any cultural traditions that attach shame to same-sex relationships. They. . ." It was his turn to hesitate, and he caught Kon's quick upturned face at it. "Let's put it this way. It would be unusual for a Kryptonian to only experience attraction to the opposite gender. Not to say it couldn't happen. But that would be more on the rare side."

"You're saying. . ." Kon's mouth was pretty much all the way open. "You're saying the whole _planet_ was gay."

Interestingly, it wasn't the boy's crude summation that flicked him on the raw, but that one word _was_. Three simple letters that put everything about Clark in the past tense. All of Krypton: a was. He wanted to grab Kon's hand, push it at his chest. _It doesn't feel like a was in here, you little shit._ He slowly cranked the lube shaft to have someplace to put his hands.

"I'm sorry," Kon said after a minute. "That was. . . I didn't mean to put it that way."

"No worries," he said easily. 

"So feeling that way—I mean, it would be messed up for me _not_ to feel that way, right? It's just a part of being Kryptonian, yeah?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"But it's part of who I am, it's a Kryptonian thing, it's not just like being gay, right?"

Clark's eyes were sharp on him. "Well I don't know, Kon, you're half-human, I see no reason you couldn't be gay. Would that be the worst thing that ever happened?"

Kon's face turned a bewildering array of colors and flip-flopped through eight or nine emotions before settling on confused. "I—that—no! I didn't mean—I wasn't—if I—"

Clark tossed the rag overboard. "Look. If you're attracted to someone of your gender, I don't see what the big deal is. Who cares if it's because of your Kryptonian genes or your human ones, and why is one okay but the other not? You have to figure out how not to go through your life with a tape measure dividing you right down the middle, Kryptonian here and human there. You're one unique and whole person, Kon. And when you accept that person for who he is, instead of trying to read him through everybody else, well, you're going to have a lot better time in this life."

"Sorry," Kon mumbled.

"I didn't mean you had to be sorry, I was just trying to—forget it. Hand me that spanner, will you?"

They worked together in silence a few more minutes. Kon was pretty handy with the tools, knowing instinctively what would be needed next and passing it over without comment. "You could probably solder that back together with heat vision," he said in a low voice, after about fifteen minutes of watching Clark work. 

"Probably," he agreed. "Though I don't cheat and use powers, on the farm. Anyway, that's assuming I didn't slip and burn through the metal, if I did try. It's as thin as paper through there, and with her age, a replacement part's going to run about six or seven hundred. You got that lying around upstairs?"

Kon grinned, and shook his head ruefully. "What?" Clark said.

"Nothing. You just sound so much like your dad sometimes. Especially when you come to the farm."

"Yeah, well, boy out of Kansas," he said, but he was not displeased. 

"So did you ever feel that way about anyone?" Kon asked. It wasn't like he hadn't seen it coming from _can I ask you a question_. "In love, I mean?"

"Sure."

The barest pause. "What about with someone. . . someone your own gender?"

"Sure."

Kon nodded, sagely, like they were talking weather or the farm report. 

"And that was. . . just like being in love with a girl?"

"Not exactly, no. But then, being in love with one person is never exactly like being in love with another person. Love isn't a one-size-fits-all. The next person you're with, it's going to be a completely different experience from M'gann."

"That. . . won't necessarily be a bad thing," he said, and Clark smiled too. "So, you were with Lois Lane, and then you guys broke up, so you were able to move on. I mean, it can be done, for a Kryptonian, right?"

"Sure," he said warily. 

"And then you said there was that guy you were in love with, I guess that was before her, and you moved on from that, right?"

"See if you can't reach that Allen wrench over there. I think it rolled under the toolbox."

"So there's hope for me," Kon finished. Clark laughed.

"I think you'll pull through, yeah." 

"So the guy you were with. Do you. . . still think about him, at all?" 

"I think this will work better if you tell me about your situation, rather than the other way around."

"Yeah. Okay. Sure. It's just that there's not much to tell. I've just basically been freaking out for about six months about this. Stupid, huh, because it's not like I'm ever going to do anything about it."

"You're not?"

"Hell no. He's my best friend, I'm not going to screw that up just because I'm. . . you know."

"Kon. Treating your sexual orientation like an unmentionable disease is a pretty bad idea, but it's an especially bad idea when you do it in front of someone else, and he happens to share said orientation."

"Right. Yeah, I get that. It's just that I don't know the word, really, because it's a Kryptonian thing, not a human one, so I didn't know if—"

 _That again_. Clark winced. "I think 'bi' works just fine. So, you don't want to risk your friendship, is what you were saying?"

"Yeah." He was trailing a finger in a small smear of oil, drawing a blurry pattern. "Not that I think anything would happen, if I ever did say anything. He's not. . . um, bi. I don't think. Anyway, it's never come up. And I wouldn't want him to think that's what our friendship was about, you know? I mean, he's pretty much the most fascinating guy I've ever met, just. . . out there, you know? Very. . . intense. And smart. He is so goddamned smart. Sometimes I don't even want to open my mouth when he's around, only then he'll look at me like he really is interested in what I think about something, and I'll just. . . it just makes me happy. Just being around him makes me happy, apart from the other. Even though we're completely different. Does this make any sense?"

Clark tucked his smile into the corner of his mouth. "It makes a lot of sense."

"You ever felt anything like that?"

"Yep."

"For a guy?"

"Yep."

Kon was quiet again, but there was a relaxed set to his eyes now. He looked less like too-taut wire wrapped around a spindle. Just saying the words to someone had obviously made a difference. "Do you think I'm in love?" he said softly.

"Yep," Clark said.

"Yeah," the kid sighed. "Man, I cannot catch a break."

"Afraid that's the way it goes." Clark sighed and thunked the Allen wrench onto the ground. "Tell you what, let's go grab a lemonade break. If Cora's going to pull through, she's going to need the Kent men at her best, and I'm several quarts low on lemons and sugar. Race you to the house."

Kon narrowed his eyes. "Did you mean that, about not using powers on the farm?"

"'Course not, sucker." And with an effortless burst of super-speed, he was in the kitchen and chugging down a frosty glass while Kon's howls of outrage reverberated across the back pasture. Half the time he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be father figure, wise old uncle, or annoying older brother, but the times when he got to be the latter sure were more fun than the first two.

* * *

"Well, today we had sex," Clark sighed, and though Bruce didn't change position on the screen, both eyebrows shot upward. "Today we had _conversations_ about sex," he clarified. "You know what I mean. Trying to talk about sex with a teenage boy. God, it was—you can't begin to imagine what that's like."

"Really." 

Clark shot him a look. The skype screen was aimed at the side of Bruce's face, and he was typing on another screen, glancing occasionally at a third. In from patrol, or maybe about to go back out—hair cowl-mussed, suit still on. He needed someone to push his hair back down. Clark brushed a knuckle against the screen, just an absent gesture, but it swiveled Bruce's eyes back on him full, ice-gray and over-large, in the screen. "You all right?"

"Sure," Clark said. "I'm not keeping you?"

"No, I've got these reports to finish anyway. So what do you think?"

"About what?"

An eyebrow plummeted down. Funny some people thought you couldn't read Bruce's face. He'd never known Bruce to think a single thought he couldn't read off his browline like a tickertape. "About the girl. The reason you're out there? Do you think she's ready to work with you in Metropolis or not?"

"Oh." Clark tipped his head against the wall. He was trying to be as quiet as possible, but the walls upstairs weren't very thick, and he didn't want to wake his parents—or Kon and Kara, for that matter—in the wee hours because he was skyping in his room like a teenager. "The girl has a name."

"Unnecessary risk, that's her name."

Any other night Clark would have taken a swing at that one; Bruce's lack of trust in Kara was bothersome. Once he had accused Bruce of sexism. Bruce had just snorted and kept stripping off his gauntlets. "Truth is," Clark sighed. "I have no idea. Less than no idea. One minute she's in perfect control, everything I could ask for, the next minute she's — her head's just somewhere else."

"Sounds like you answered the question." Bruce was typing vigorously. 

"No I didn't, not really. Who's to say some training exercise in Kansas is a fair test of what she would really be like in combat, or in a crisis situation?"

Bruce was reaching for his coffee. "I agree. Let's throw her into a crisis situation and hope for the best. That sounds like a good plan."

"Smart ass." He closed his eyes and pushed down the ache in his chest. When he opened them Bruce was looking at him. 

"What's up," he said.

"Nothing. I'm just tired." The long burrowing ache of Kon's probing had still not settled inside him. Like a rock cairn over hot lava, and any prodding at the rocks would spill molten stuff down his insides. Bruce's look was too shrewd by half. There was every possibility he was as transparent to Bruce as Bruce was to him. But Bruce would never press him.

"You need to come back," he said briskly. "You've been there over a week now. She's ready or she isn't, and if the answer's no, you keep working with her when you can and wait until she is. I don't see what the hurry is."

"Maybe I'd like to take a vacation sometime soon. Head off to the Caribbean, leave everything in my cousin's capable hands."

"I think that's fine, as long as there aren't any parts of the planet you're too attached to. Your cousin's capable hands can incinerate the earth's crust to magma."

It was an odd reflection of his own mental image of a moment earlier, like there was a throughline connecting their thought processes. That was another pang, another slow slide of knife under his taut smile. It was just because he was out here on the farm with nothing to do, nothing really to think about. It was Kon and his stupid questions. 

"Clark. You're not all right." Bruce's voice was going to undo him, it really was.

"I am. I'm sorry. I'm just thinking about a lot of things. Dad's just—"

"What's wrong?" The quick worry in Bruce's voice made him feel bad. 

"Nothing. His heart's holding steady, and Mom's hip, but let's be honest, they're not going to be able to keep at this forever, and something tells me Kon and Kara are not going to want to live the rest of their lives on a farm in Kansas. Any more than I do, for that matter, and what does that say about me. What does that say about me that I can't find a way to make things right here, that I can't—" He wiped at his face. "Sorry," he said, and he just sat there. Bruce didn't say anything. 

When he put his hand down, Bruce was looking straight at him, like he had been for a while. "You could come back east, just for tonight," he said. "Just to take a break."

Well. He could do that. He considered it. 

"I've got a new systems diagnostic to run, I'm up for hours anyway. You could come back and keep me company."

"You could give me advice about how to talk to teenage boys."

"Hunh. You love it when I do that."

"Oh hey, speaking of. You might want to. . . well." He wasn't sure what the etiquette was for warning your best friend that your son was about to jump his. Probably he should say nothing. "How's Tim?"

"Subtle," Bruce said into his coffee. "And Tim's fine. That's what Conner wanted to talk about?"

"Ah. . . well, not as. . ."

"Keep out of it, is my advice. They'll figure it out for themselves. And if they don't, all the better, they'll have more energy and focus for important things."

"I'd like Kon not to get kicked in the chest, is all. It wasn't hard to figure out who he was talking about today, and that has the potential to really backfire on him. If I can protect him from a little of that pain, then yeah, I guess I'd like to."

"He doesn't need protection."

"You say that because you don't know him like I do. He's a pretty vulnerable kid, sweet and surprisingly naive in a lot of ways. He doesn't—"

"No, I mean he doesn't need protection in this situation, trust me."

Clark crossed his arms. His smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Oh, I see. Auntie Bruce has it all worked out. Because the mysteries of the human heart are just an open book to you."

"No, because Tim and I had this conversation two years ago."

"Oh." He resettled on his bed. "Show-off."

"You're new at this, you'll catch up."

"Yeah. I know I bitch about it, but the advice part, that wouldn't actually be so unwelcome. Sometimes I feel like I don't know my ass end from oranges, around either one of them."

Bruce reached for more coffee. "Your what?"

"Ass end from oranges. You never heard that?"

"No. I haven't heard it because no one says it."

"My mother says it."

"We need to get you back east as soon as possible."

"Yeah." He plucked at the bedspread. Not the bedspread he had grown up with—a replacement his mother had thrown over the squeaky mattress sometime since he had left home. When she had been trying to fix it up as a spare room, probably. There were odd little blue flowers all over it, but the coloring was just to the left of the stenciling, so they were more like tiny blue orbs floating in space. "Well. Not just yet. There are some things I need to—I just need to stay a bit."

There were Bruce's eyes again, studying him. "Okay."

"I should let you go."

"You don't have to." 

He listened to Bruce type for a while, then Bruce swiveled again to face him. "Tell you what. Why don't I come out there in the morning? I've got nothing going on here for a few days, and it sounds like the situation there could use a new set of eyes. I could help you take a look at her, figure things out."

He hated the wild leap of joy in his chest. Hated that he knew a flicker of it showed on his face. "Yeah? Think you could swing that?"

"If I get the front bedroom."

"Well. . . actually that's Kara's room now. I'm sure she'd be happy to share, though."

Bruce gave another snort, loud enough to rouse the house, and he quickly turned down his volume. "Figures. All right, I'll be there around ten your time, depending on what flight patterns are like on my end."

"Hey Bruce."

"Mm."

"Thanks."

Bruce looked at him again. The skype screen was perched too high, in order to be out of his way as he moved around the monitors and typed. It made his eyes look too large, his face too angular. "Don't mention it. Though you might possibly mention it to Kara."

He grinned. "What should I say?"

"Tell her Grumpy Ass is on his way."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce comes to visit. Martha Kent has a spectacular gift for saying the wrong thing.

"And then that Linda Feltzer—you remember Linda, honey, you went to school with her niece Paige—told me, 'oh, you don't need to bring a thing to the bake sale on Monday, we've got it all covered,' when I know for a fact Cleo and Helene were up baking all _night_ Sunday, and if they had found out Linda was telling people not to bring things—it's jealousy, that's all it is, pure simple meanness, it's not my fault the woman's pie crusts are the consistency of shoe leather, what sort of fat is she using, anyway, beef tallow? Here you go Bruce, here's more of that pea casserole, I insist you try just a little bit more of it, I don't think you got any of the pearl onions last time."

Bruce watched the casserole dish head back his direction with a wan gaze, and Clark hid his grin under his napkin. _No dodging my mother's food this time, I promised her you would eat_ , he had said before they came downstairs, and Bruce's genuine alarm had been unmistakable. No matter; it would do the man good to eat something that didn't come from a blender. 

Kon made a muffled noise that might have been "more sweet potatoes, please," and Clark caught the roll of Bruce's eyes. It was the first thing Kon had said all night, with Bruce at the table. Normally the two of them wouldn't shut up jabbering, but Bruce's presence seemed to have intimidated them into silence, at least for now. Even Kara kept a wary eye on Bruce as she spooned gravy onto her biscuits.

"Coming _heeeere_?" Kara had practically wailed, when he had told her. "But _whyyyy_?"

"Just to help me out with a few things, that's all. Oh, don't be that way. The two of you get along fine, when you put your mind to it."

"Uggggghh," she had moaned, flopping back on the bed. "Now we have to put up with his grumpy ass telling us what to do and pretending he's in charge. Can't you just tell him we don't need him here?"

"Stop being such a baby. Having Batman to help with training exercises will be useful. And Kara, Batman doesn't have to _pretend_ he's in charge. He and I lead the League together, understand?"

She twisted her mouth skeptically. "Fine, whatever. But you're a little more in charge than he is, right? I mean, you can tell me the truth."

She was watching Bruce now from her end of the table, one eye on any sudden movements. She needn't have worried — Bruce was effectively pinned behind a mountain of food and wouldn't be escaping for hours. Between the sweet potatoes and the continued tales of Linda Feltzer's misdeeds, Clark doubted he would see Bruce until tomorrow. Somehow Bruce was managing to make interested noises at all the right places while still engaging his father in conversation about the farm. About halfway through the meal, Clark discovered the reason Krypto was being so friendly with Bruce — the mangy mutt was getting sizable helpings of Bruce's food under the table when Ma Kent's back was turned, and Clark quickly put a stop to that, to Bruce's murderous look. He couldn't help it — for once he was going to see Bruce eat an actual meal, instead of having two bites and then taking his liquid dinner from Alfred. 

Kon and Kara had resumed conversation on their end of the table, with a weather eye on Bruce. Irritatingly enough, they had recently learned the trick of pitching conversations out of super-hearing range — a trick only other supers would be capable of, and he shouldn't begrudge them, but to learn to do it he gathered practice with a partner was required, and that was just what they wouldn't give him. Kara arched a saucy brow at him. 

By the time the pies came to the table, Bruce was curiously drained of color. Clark almost had mercy on him and let him beg off, but then he remembered all the reasons you should never ever feel sorry for Bruce Wayne, and let his mother pile the vanilla ice cream on the blueberry pie. "Home-churned," she said, and Clark laughed. "Okay, Ma, I'm calling foul. I'm pretty sure hitting 'mix' on the CuisinArt ice cream maker is not exactly the same as home-churned," he said, which earned him a quick flick of the ice cream scoop in his direction, and a pointedly mean giggle from Kara. 

At least Kon and Kara were helpful about clearing the table and getting the dishes started, while his parents continued to monopolize Bruce. For some strange reason they had always enjoyed Bruce, and for some equally strange reason Bruce, who rarely extended himself for anybody, was always the soul of courtesy to his parents—wandering out to the barn to lend a hand with whatever his father was doing, drying dishes in the kitchen while his mother nattered away at him about stuff Bruce could not possibly give a shit about. 

"Bruce? Coffee? Nothing makes two slices of pie go down easier than a stiff batch of homebrew. And you hush your mouth," she said to Clark, "it's homebrew if I say it is, no matter if it came out of my Keurig. Bruce, have you ever tried that machine? I bet you must have all those fancy gadgets like that back at your house. Jonathan and I just _love_ it, and after Clark gave it to us last Christmas we just went wild, trying all the different little capsules and whatnot they have for it. Of course, we have to drive all the way to the Costco three towns over to buy the dadblamed things, but I don't care, it's worth it, if the oil pan on the truck falls out on the way to pick up another box of my amaretto vanilla bean raspberry frolatte, so be it, say I, and—are you all right, dear?"

Bruce was standing at the back door. "Just a little fresh air," he said. "I'll be back in a bit. Can't pass up the opportunity to enjoy the night air out here."

"Well all right, but watch the chill in that air, it's getting closer to winter than you'd think. Kara, sweetheart, don't stack the plates like that until you've scraped them first—land sakes, child, it's a dishwasher, not a pressure hose, that's more than my poor Whirlpool can handle. Clark, how did things go with the tractor today? Are you willing to admit defeat, or is your pride still the stumbling block it always was?"

"I'm still a sinner, Ma." He grabbed a cup of coffee and considered following Kon as he trailed off upstairs; maybe he should try some more of that big-brotherly sex talk, because in thinking back on it, he might have been overly short with the boy. It was just that he hadn't had much experience with this sort of thing, not like Bruce.

He wandered outside after the dishes were done, realizing after about half an hour that Bruce had not come back. Probably the man had walked to the airstrip and was headed down the runway to Gotham at this very moment. 

"Bruce?"

There was no immediate answer, so he walked the fenceline. The moon was up and dappling the pasture, but no sign of Bruce out wandering about anywhere. He extended his hearing—he did try not to, most of the time, especially around Bruce, who found it intensely intrusive—and found him then, though in truth by the time he rounded the corner of the barn he didn't need super-hearing to find him. 

"Go back inside," Bruce said weakly. Another fit of retching bent him double. It was not pretty to see. He had one hand on the side of the barn.

"Jesus," Clark said. He went into the barn and turned on the taps in the little bathroom off the tack room until the water was clear and cold. He tugged a fresh towel from the rack and soaked a corner of it, then filled a clean glass with water. When he came back out Bruce was leaning against the side of the barn. There was enough moon to see how haggard he looked.

"Drink," he said, and Bruce gulped it down. He thrust the glass back at Clark.

"Shit," he said, and brought up the water in violent heaves that tore at Clark's stomach too. His arm was trembling. 

"Okay, come on, we're getting you inside."

"No," Bruce groaned. "Can't do that—your mother—"

"In the barn, at least. Come on." He guided him into the warm dark of the barn, to an empty stall that had been freshly hayed. "Come on, you can at least lie down."

Bruce wiped at his face with the damp towel. "You have a bucket?"

Clark handed him a pail. "All yours."

"Perfect." He had no more sunk to the hay than another round of puking began. How one man's body could contain this much puke Clark had no idea, but it was too dark to see if he was mainly bringing up bile at this point or not. He brought fresh towels and the occasional sip of water, which always came right back up, and after a while the rate seemed to slow, and Bruce collapsed back against a bale of hay. Clark studied his hands.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what," Bruce murmured. 

"I never quite believed you."

Bruce cracked an eye. "About what."

"About your training. About why you eat the way you do. About why you do what you do. I mean, I know, objectively speaking, what your physical limitations are, but believe me, it is almost impossible to remember that when working side by side with you. Almost impossible to remember you're not meta, or super-powered, or anything like that. And impossible to remember that you discipline your body the way you do for a reason. I'm sorry for making light of that, and for rolling my eyes every time you drink your dinner. I'm sorry I let them pressure you into eating like that."

Bruce grunted. He used a clean edge of the towel to wipe his face. Clark tried to remember the last time he had seen Bruce eat a meal. Never, was when he had seen Bruce eat a meal, that was when. Even ordering take-out together in the cave, Bruce would allow himself a bite, and then Alfred would have a kale shake ready to hand for him, without comment. 

"Well," Bruce was saying. He took a little of the water, and winced. "It's not entirely your fault." He lay back limp. He was probably cold. There might be a heater in the tack room; he should go see about that. But Bruce was talking.

"I mean, yes, it is your fault, I do want you to feel bad about that. But not too bad. You should know, it's not just because of training that I don't eat."

"Oh." Clark weighed that. "Why don't you eat, then?"

"Most of the reason is, I can't."

"Can't. . . psychologically?" Even in the dark he caught Bruce's grimace. 

"No, idiot, I do not find blueberry pie emotionally challenging. I like to eat just fine. I mean I can't because I've had three-quarters of my bowel re-sectioned and used for parts, that's why."

"Oh." 

Bruce reached for the pail and began another desultory round of retching. "Anyway," he said, when he was done. "It's kind of a story."

"I've got nothing but time. Where did you leave most of your intestines?"

"Nepal."

It wasn't the answer he'd been expecting. "Really. Was it. . . some kind of endurance test?"

"No, it was not an endurance test. Generally you are allowed to keep your internal organs for those. But yes, maybe it was an endurance test. Anyway, whatever it was, I failed it."

"Failed it?"

"That's what I said. First monastery I studied in was the best. Most competitive in the Himalayas. Only took two novices a year. I knew I was good, and I knew I could be the best. So that's where I wanted to study."

"What happened?" He toed a clean pail closer to Bruce.

"What happened was I failed. They kicked me out. Only getting kicked out of that place meant failing the trial by combat, and trials don't happen with wooden swords. Most novices who fail die in the combat, and their bodies get dumped on the streets of Kathmandu."

Clark frowned. "Is that what happened to you?"

"It is. Only I wasn't dead. And by the time the street cleaners found me two days later, peritonitis had set in, and my insides were pretty much rotting away. Wasn't much they could do but re-section what was left and hope for the best."

"Dear God," Clark murmured. They were quiet. He wondered how much of Bruce's strength of will had been poured into not dying, during those long cold days of lying in a gutter, waiting, praying for someone to have mercy. God damn everybody who had walked past him—just one more bloody piece of street refuse. 

"I hope you went back and kicked their asses, at that monastery," he said, and Bruce managed a cough of a laugh.

"Not hardly."

"But they did finally agree to train you?"

"No. That was the hospital orderly who did that."

"That was. . . okay, I think I'm missing some of this story."

Another hacking sound that was probably a laugh. "Not really, that's pretty much the story. But the rest of it isn't important. Water?"

Clark listened to him drinking, and this time, miraculously, it seemed to stay down. "We need to think about getting you back into the house," he said quietly.

Bruce shook his head. "No, this will go on for a while yet. And then the real fun begins, because I doubt I was lucky enough to vomit up everything. Trust me, I need to stay out here."

"All right, but I'm staying with you."

"Suit yourself."

After a while Clark got up and unfolded some horse blankets from the trunk in the tack room. They were stiff and scratchy, but warm. He spread one over Bruce. "Horse blankets, but no horses," Bruce murmured. "And an empty tack room."

"Yep."

"Which recession took the horses?"

"The one when I was seventeen. I grew up with them around."

"You any good?"

"I am."

"We'll go riding," Bruce said, his voice in a sleep-drift.

"Hey Bruce."

"Mm."

"What was his name, the man who trained you?"

He could hear the scratch of Bruce's head turning on the hay. "Jagrati."

"Is he alive?"

"No to both. Not alive, and not a he. She wasn't—" Bruce's cough tried to become a retch, and subsided into a groan. 

"Sorry," Clark whispered. "Don't talk."

"It's cold. If you're going to stay, you can at least turn your temperature up."

"Sure." He forgot that, sometimes—how much Bruce hated the cold. He could withstand it, no question, like he withstood anything. But he hated it. Nepal must have been a torment. 

He scooted closer and spread the blanket over both of them, and settled in to watch Bruce's fitful sleep. When he was sure Bruce was asleep he let a hand rest on his shoulder, for no real reason than that he could. The small hitch in Bruce's breathing showed he had not, after all, been asleep, but the hand was not shrugged off, and soon Bruce was drifting off again.

* * *

Clark woke to a fiery meteor crashing through the wall of the barn and flooding his eyeballs with searing light. The meteor also whistled, in a determinedly cheery tone—a piercing, tuneless, familiar sound. 

"Wondering when you two were gonna look alive," his dad called over the stall door, and Clark groaned and tugged at the horse blanket. Bruce was raising a bleary head and stumbling up. 

"First shower," he mumbled, as he headed to the door. 

It took most of his own shower to unknot the kinks in his back from sleeping on the barn floor. It would have taken half as long if he had had any hot water left, but Bruce was not the most considerate about water usage. After breakfast he would take Bruce on a field trip to the basement so he could remind him about the size of the hot water tank. He'd never seen the hot water tank at Wayne Manor, but he was guessing there were some eight or nine. 

Nonetheless, he did see to it that Bruce had a cup of hot tea for breakfast and as little else as he wanted. He even trod gently on his mother's toe when she began to make little fluttering noises about putting on another plate of biscuit, and how a cup of tea wouldn't keep a grown man together till lunchtime. Kon and Kara were happily plowing away at the biscuit, and they didn't look like they thought sharing was such a great idea. 

"Lingonberry," Kara said, handing the jam down to him and licking her spoon. He squinted at it. "Go on, try it, it's Scandinavian. The Mindenhalls got it when they went to the Ikea in Logansboro, they brought back like fifteen jars. Oh hey! We should totally drive over to Ikea today! I need to start thinking about my own apartment when I move to Metropolis anyway, I have some serious planning to do, the decor is crucial."

"Do they sell Scandinavian laundry sorters?" Kon was reaching across her for another biscuit. "Because unless they do, no one's going to be able to see your decor."

"Shut it, you're just jealous because I know how to match clothes with more than a black T shirt."

"Kara," his mother said reprovingly, and Kara rolled her eyes but subsided. His father was stumping in from morning chores now, still whistling, and Clark felt mildly guilty about stiffing him on the help this morning, but barn floors were more uncomfortable than he remembered them being when he was a teenager. 

"Morning, boys," he called. He glanced at his wife, and Clark caught The Look that passed between them. "So," his mother began. She glanced at where Kon and Kara were still bickering, and kept her voice lowered. She licked her lips.

"Clark. Your father and I have a bone to pick with you."

"Oh?"

"We do indeed," his father chimed in. "Your mother and I are mighty upset to think that you think things about us that just aren't true."

"I do?"

"You surely do. Honey, you know that referendum on gay marriage last year? Well, how on earth do you think your father and I voted in that?"

The fork with his scrambled eggs didn't make it to his mouth. He looked from one to the other of them, their sweetly expectant faces. Even Bruce was showing interest, over his tea and what looked like the _Smallville Sunrise_. "I. . . have no idea?"

His father made a noise, and his mother reared back. "Clark Kent, I'm surprised at you. What sort of bigots do you think we are? Obviously you imagine that your parents are some kind of, I don't know, old codgers who don't know the way the world works. Or worse, that we're the sort of people who couldn't love our son if he was different from us. I want you to think about how silly _that_ one sounds," she finished.

"All right." He was still looking at the two of them. They exchanged another Look and sighed.

"Honey." She was leaning forward now. "You and Bruce do not have to sleep in the barn." 

"Ah," he said, and "Actually," Bruce began. "Clark was—" 

He rode over Bruce. "Ma. It's—it's fine. I appreciate what you said, really I do. But Bruce and I just wanted to stay up talking last night without disturbing anyone, and we ended up falling asleep out there. It wasn't—that was just it. We're not. . . ah. . . you know. . ." _Oh, excellent_ , he thought, because they certainly had Kon's attention now, at least. He sounded like every bumbling caricature of Kon himself, trying to talk about sexuality, and he was dimly aware of going down in flames. "We're not. . . involved, in that way."

Kara had exploded in laughter, spraying a bit of lingonberry jam on the tablecloth. She was leaning forward and trying to explain the joke to a puzzled Kon, who kept glancing at Bruce with a confounded expression. Kara's giggles made the lines around his mother's mouth harden. "Well, that's just the living end," his mother was fuming. His father put a hand on her arm. "Martha," he said.

"No, I mean it, that's just the living end. We're not _idiots_ , you know, and when your father comes back to tell me that the two of you are lying out in the barn sleeping in each other's arms, I'm not going to sit here and be told that you were just talking, like you think that who you are is something to be _ashamed_ of, that needs to be hidden! I won't have it, not in this house! I won't have that kind of silliness in this house, not on my account, and not on your father's. Who do you think we are?"

"Ma," he said, and he realized he was making little soothing motions with his hands, trying to calm her down. She realized it too, and her eyes snapped fire at him. "Ma, please. I'm not lying to you, and no one is trying to hide anything. Bruce and I are just friends, all right? No one was scaring the cows last night, I promise."

"Of course, son," his father cut in. "Bruce, you said something last night about wanting to see how that new irrigation system was working out in the back field, if you want to drive out with—"

"Clark Joseph Kent, I won't have it," his mother resumed, and he shut his eyes briefly. She had tossed her napkin on the table. "I won't! I won't sit at my own breakfast table and be lied to, not when you sat right here at this very table not two years back and told me you were involved!"

"Ma. . . I can promise you I never. . ." Bruce was definitely not reading the _Smallville Sunrise_ now.

"But you did! You sat right there and _told_ me you were in love with him, with your very own mouth you did! And now you want to pretend you didn't say that?"

All conversation stopped. 

Kara stopped jabbering at Kon, who stopped muttering back to her; his father stopped trying to talk to Bruce over top of them; even Krypto stopped licking the floor and raised his head. Slowly the exact situation seemed to dawn on his mother, too, who after all was not stupid. She sat there, frozen, the coffeepot in her hand, a stricken look on her face.

Clark looked at his plate. No one was saying a thing. "Jesus Holy Christ, Ma," he said quietly. 

He tossed his napkin on the table, rose and headed out the side door to the barn, leaving the silent kitchen behind him. He might as well get started with chores.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awkward barn sex, but more importantly, Ikea.

The sun was low in the sky, turning the side of the barn late-afternoon gold, when Clark heard footsteps headed his way. He kept at Cora, his head buried under the tractor's hood, tightening the drive-shaft to see if that made the difference this time. 

"Not one to accept defeat, are you?"

"Nope." He rubbed his sleeve across his brow and squinted at Bruce, who was standing with his back to the sun. "Where've you been all day?"

"I took Kara to Ikea."

He blinked. "You're kidding me."

"I am not. I think you will agree I can withstand a great deal of physical punishment. But I am a broken man."

"You went in without back-up?"

"It seemed like a simple mission. Drive her there, look at furniture, drive back. First of all, this place is conservatively the length of seventeen football fields."

"Ah, yeah. Have you really never been before?"

"Seventeen football fields, and she talked the entire length of them, both ways. Talked all the drive there, talked all the drive back. I now have opinions about things I did not know existed this morning, like the direction of the last season of Glee and the bone structure necessary to maintain a pixie cut."

Clark tried not to laugh, and lost the battle. "Well, at least you guys got some time together."

"That we did. And I got myself a juicer out of it, so I won't starve to death while I'm here." Bruce leaned against the fence and watched him, hands in his pockets. Clark pushed down his irritation. He had at least assumed that for once—for goddamn once—Bruce's inability to talk about things would work for him, and they could just agree to never talk about what had been said at breakfast, ever. If Bruce wanted to talk about it, he could knock himself out; Clark was going to say nothing. 

"So, I guess now that you've discovered she's a teenage girl, your views about Kara are even more negative."

Bruce cocked a brow. If he was surprised at Clark's tone, he didn't show it. "I don't dislike teenage girls. If you trouble to recall, I've raised two of them, though I do think yours is another order of thing. However."

"Here we go," Clark muttered, tightening his grip on the fuel valve. 

"However. Kara's impulse control is poor, even for a teenager. Her emotions are highly volatile—again, even for a teenager. And most disturbingly, I found her ability to read other people unsatisfactory in the extreme. During several encounters, she interpreted as hostile or unfriendly remarks that were innocuous, or looks that were merely curious. Her temper is dangerous."

"Really. I seem to recall knowing someone else with a dangerous temper, who still manages to get his job done."

"Exactly. Because I have learned to control my temper, to master it. Kara hasn't learned that yet. A further difference is that when I make a mistake and lose control, crockery gets smashed. When Kara makes a mistake, someone could die."

"That's a prejudicial argument that would justify keeping every metahuman or superpowered individual in a prison cell." Clark's jaw was tight, his teeth practically grinding. "I cannot believe you would say that to me."

"I have a bad habit of saying hard truths that I think you can hear," Bruce said slowly. "We're talking about Kara, not you, or anyone else. I don't think that about Conner, for instance, who has worked hard to master a temper far more formidable than Kara's, or than yours, for that matter. And you're usually the first to worry about loss of control, which is why a certain item sits in my vault, or did you forget about that?"

In his head he saw Bruce using kryptonite on Kara, bringing her to heel like a dog. Rage shook his limbs. He swallowed against the tang of it in his mouth. "You're coming up with excuses to delay her training," he said. "You don't trust her, and I'm beginning to think my initial suspicion was correct—you don't trust any woman with that much power."

"I see." Bruce was still leaning against the fence, but he was studying the grass now, an abstracted expression on his face. Probably reciting mantras in his head. That was irritating, too—watching Bruce use his calming techniques, as though Bruce had any right to be angry with _him_. "I think if you reflect on my relationship with Diana, you will see how untrue that is."

Clark's laugh this time was short and ugly. "Why, because you've fucked her? Misogynists like sex too, I hear."

He had the pleasure of hearing Bruce's heartrate skyrocket. He could even see the wash of adrenaline in his body, the widened capillaries, the flare of iris. _Come on, you son of a bitch, swing at me_. 

"I was referring," Bruce said, in a voice that sounded like it was being dragged across concrete, "to our friendship, and my absolute trust in her. And if you use that verb about her again, I will lose the temper you clearly so desperately want me to. Why, I wonder?"

Clark tossed his rag in the box and turned. "Because this is important to me. Because Kara—she could change everything. Because I go to bed every night knowing— _knowing_ , please understand what it means to _know_ it—that people have died today I could have saved, and did not. And maybe Kara can help with some of that. People will live because of her, who wouldn't have without her."

"And with Kara around, everything wouldn't be all your fault," Bruce said. Clark sighed.

"No. It wouldn't all be my fault. So make it about that if you want, reduce everything to the lowest common denominator the way you always do."

"I wasn't—"

"So maybe we should ask you why you're so dead set against her helping me. Maybe you don't want me to have an _actual_ partner up there, an invulnerable one. Maybe for once I'd like to have a partner I didn't have to be _worrying_ about all the goddamn time."

He wondered if the sudden swoosh of blood flow in Bruce's chest indicated hurt, or if that was more of the rage. The man's face was impassive, of course. Probably all emotion had long since atrophied before it ever reached his brain. You could think you were having a relationship, but he was just a machine, there was nothing there.

"I see," Bruce said, and then nothing more. After a minute or so he started to head back to the house. Clark didn't turn around from the engine. "You know," he said, and Clark just bit his lip, stared harder at the engine. "I thought at first you were mad at your mother, and just pissing on me because you could. But no, turns out it's me you're mad at, isn't it."

He stood there, like he was maybe waiting for Clark to say something. Clark didn't pretend to be messing with the engine any more. He stood there with his head bowed, the taste of shame flatter and more nauseating than his rage of a moment ago. _Wait, stop, don't go_ , but the words wouldn't make it out his throat. 

"I'll get the jet to the airstrip before dinner. Please make my excuses to your parents, I'm sure they'll believe anything you tell them." Bruce was walking back to the house, hands still in his pockets. Clark watched him go. _He likes it here_ , struck him suddenly. And then: _Christ, what did you just say to him_. 

He seized the wrench and brought it down with crushing force on the engine block. Cora's innards collapsed in a smoking heap, and the metal frame was sliced in half, crumpled like torn paper. The front end of the tractor gave one last shivering groan, and heaved over on the grass. He stared at the twisted wreckage. "Fuck," he gasped.

* * *

He came in the front door instead of the side door, because he wanted to see if Bruce's sleek rental was still parked out front—which, as it turned out, it was. 

Kon and Kara were in the living room, locked in furious battle. "Die, you slug-breath bastard," Kara spat. "Eat turds." She jammed the controller to the left, a bloodthirsty snarl on her face. Kon's face was winched tight in concentration, his glare no less evil. 

"Hey check it out," he called. "New game system!" Kara took advantage of his distraction to explode his head into a thousand bloody shards. The sound effects were disturbingly accurate. 

"Hah! You're dead. Taste my wrath. Isn't this awesome? Bruce is the best."

"Didn't know they sold gaming systems at Ikea," he said. 

"Oh, we stopped a few other places too. Not to mention my shoes got completely destroyed when we—oh no you don't, you absolutely do _not_ , you keep your zombie ass down on the ground where it _belongs_ or I am coming to slice off the rest of your limbs, you piece of—"

"Next curse word gets you five minutes with hands off the controller while Kon does whatever he wants," Clark said. "Have you seen Pa?"

The two of them were squinty-eyed and rigid at the screen, mouths contorted in small hissing sounds, and whatever fractional attention they might have bestowed on him was gone. Through the doorway to the kitchen he could see Bruce and his mother shelling peas for dinner. They were sitting at the table together, heads in earnest conversation about something. Bruce was frowning and shaking his head—without really thinking about it Clark extended his hearing.

"That's exactly what you can't do," Bruce was saying.

"Oh, Bruce, I'm just not like that. I don't think I have what it takes."

"That's ridiculous. You have management skills most CEOs I know would kill for. This Feltzer woman is trying an end run with the music minister search committee, and you're going to shut her down."

"Helene thinks I should just let her take over the committee, that it's not worth fighting about. But my feeling is, if everyone just rolls over to Linda all the time, when do we stand up to her?"

"Exactly. What you have going for you right now is that she underestimates you, so she won't see it coming until you've yanked the rug out from under her. But don't go public until you've lined up the rest of the committee on your side, and for that you need to plan a little artful wooing."

"You really think they'd listen to me?"

"I know it. A little strategizing is all it takes."

"You think I should start with Helene?"

He shook his head. "No, she's your base, you go to her last. Start with the ones you're less sure about, like Vicky and Elise. Feltzer will be toast by Christmas, I promise you."

Clark leaned in the doorway, fighting down a smile. His mother was drinking it in avidly. He knew she thought the world of Bruce's mind—as well she might. Of course, the only thing she and Pa knew for sure was that Bruce Wayne, multibillionaire, provided financial and strategic assistance to the Justice League. _Crucial to our operations_ , was how Clark had put it once, and he knew they thought Bruce sat in an office with a green eyeshade, dispensing advice like an exalted accountant, or like a mafia consigliere. That was probably what they thought him, something out of _The Godfather_. Kon and Kara knew better than to reveal identities—particularly that one, the League's most guarded secret. Left to his own devices, Bruce would probably not object to his parents knowing the full truth. But the fact was, Bruce's life was more complicated than that, and he wouldn't wager the lives of every person connected to him, all that fierce and fragile family, on Clark's parents never making a single mistake.

Mistakes ran in their family.

"Oh good, I was just about to call you in for supper," his mother said, looking up brightly. "Isn't it the best news? Bruce had a business emergency back in Gotham, but it turns out his jet's weather-bound in Wichita until the morning, so we get him one more night after all. I told him you'd be so pleased, that you would have been just beside yourself if he'd had to run off like that."

"They've got early ice down there," his father said, coming down the back hallway, still drying his hands. "I was just watching the weather channel on the TV in the bedroom, 'cause of course I can't use the one in the living room on account of World War III. How'd it go out there, we gonna get Cora back on her feet for the morning?"

"About that," he said, looking at the floor. 

"Kon! Kara! You turn that infernal noise down, we can't hear ourselves think in here," his mother shrieked. "I know they're grateful, Bruce, but honestly, I don't think our life is going to be worth living. For pity's sake." She set her bowl aside and stomped into the living room.

Bruce kept his attention on the peas. His father was at the sink, whistling away. "Dad," he said. "Cora's not. . . going to be fixable."

"Oh come now, that's being a little glum, don't you think?"

"No, ah. . . not really. I destroyed her." His father fixed him with a look.

"What do you mean, you destroyed my tractor?"

"I mean, I let my temper get the better of me." He glanced at Bruce. "I lost control, Dad. I'm sorry."

His father said nothing, just looked at him. He hadn't felt the weight of that gaze on him, like that, since he was a teenager. He'd never wreaked that kind of havoc on the farm before, never destroyed an essential part of his family's livelihood. His face felt stiff with shame. He could have, should have, told him someplace away from Bruce's piercing eyes. His father was chewing on his bottom lip, and Clark knew he was trying to come up with something to say. "I'm so sorry," Clark said.

"I know, son." His father licked his lips again, then walked back out of the room. His father walked out of rooms when he didn't want to say something he might regret. _Just walk away, son_ , was one of the first things his father had taught him. And now it was him his father had to walk away from. 

He shut his eyes and leaned against the wall. A new tractor meant financing, and financing meant extending the Kents' already over-extended credit. In the morning he would drive down to Wichita and see if he could swing it on his credit. A single man, who didn't own any property, who rented his apartment. . . he had about a snowball's chance. Damn, damn, goddamn. If he had a co-signer. . . his insides writhed and twisted at what he knew he had to do, at the scalding irrecoverable shame of it. He could do it, for his family he could do it. To make this right, he could do it. 

Bruce might conceivably turn him down. But something told him he wouldn't. After his performance this afternoon, Bruce would have to be something more than human if some small part of him wouldn't enjoy seeing Clark squirm, seeing him with his hat in his hand. 

No. No, not even for them would he do it. He could find a way to swing it, he could ask Perry, maybe, to co-sign—someone, anyone else, just not Bruce. Never Bruce. But if he didn't—

Bruce set his finished bowl of peas on the table with a thunk. "Stop, you're going to hurt yourself. I ordered the replacement tractor earlier today, before we even went to Logansboro."

"You. . . did what?"

"I said, I ordered the replacement tractor. Easily done."

"You bought them a tractor," Clark said, unable to get his mouth around the words, almost. His tongue felt numb.

"Of course I did. I'm an engineer, for God's sake, I could see that machine was DOA after five minutes of watching your incompetent tinkering with it."

" _You_ bought my parents a tractor."

Bruce rose with a snort. "Look on the bright side. Now you have something else to hate me for." 

Dinner was a silent affair, punctuated by occasional shouts from the living room. His mother was actually allowing Kon and Kara to eat in the living room, in front of the screen, as a "special treat." Any other night he would have rejoiced, but the lack of chatter at the table was unwelcome tonight. Even his father seemed to have picked up on the unusual quiet, and exerted himself to talk at great length about the upcoming Lutheran Men's Duck Hunt Trip to Lake Gansehutt, and the relative merits of blue-winged teal versus northern shovelers. It was when his father began demonstrating the mating call of the wigeon that he realized there was going to be no escaping this dinner table, ever, for the rest of his life, and at the second "whee whee wheeeew" he distinctly heard Kara mutter "what the _fuck_ " as they stared in horror into the kitchen.

He lay on his bed and watched the ceiling for several hours that night, after everyone had gone to bed. He could hear his parents' soft breathing downstairs, and his father's occasional snores, the small restless noises of the farm at night. Bruce in his mother's sewing room, quietly packing his few things. The jet must by flyable by now. 

Once, he had almost said something to Bruce.

It had been years ago—in the early days of dating Lois, in fact. Nothing huge; just one of those small moments you never forgot. They had been in the cave. Clark had said something about needing to go, having to be someplace, and Bruce had arched an eyebrow. "All right, yes, fine, I'm going out with Lois tonight," he had said in exasperation.

Bruce had said nothing, but Clark's hearing had caught the small whuff of a snort that would have been inaudible to anyone else. "You know, all your contempt is pretty tiresome. I think you'd like her, if you ever spent any time with her," Clark said. "And we can't all sit in our caves, rotting away with the bats and stalactites."

"Yes, I'm a regular monk. My point is, you don't need the distraction."

"Bruce. Human relations are not a distraction. Normal people find them essential to remain, you know, healthy and functioning members of society."

Bruce was quiet at that, and Clark re-played it several times in his head, trying to figure out if he had offended. Bruce had plenty of human relations. There were his boys. And Alfred. Or maybe Bruce's silence was because he thought the idea of Clark being healthy and functioning was something of a joke. He had what you might call a point there. 

"It's not like I'm a billionaire playboy," Clark said, after a while. "Not everyone would leap at the chance, you know. To date Superman, that is. Go on a date with him, sure. But. . . that's not the same as wanting someone like that in your life."

Bruce had spun in his chair and given him a searching look. "You think Lois deserves a medal because she can stand to be with you?"

"No. But I think. . . I think there's a limited number of people I could trust, when it comes to dating. And, you know, they're not exactly lining up around the block."

It had been just a small thing, his choice to say _people_ instead of _women_. He didn't know why he had done it. He didn't think Bruce had even registered it. But Bruce wasn't turning back around. Wasn't waving his hand, telling him to go on, get out of here, go pick up his girlfriend already. Wasn't doing anything but looking at him. 

And Clark had almost said it. _Or I could stay here tonight, instead. If you wanted me to, I would_. He hadn't known it was true until that moment. Surely Bruce saw it in his eyes. And then a wild part of him thought—had believed that maybe for an instant there was a flicker of an answering something in Bruce's eyes. It was a short distance. He could cross it in a step. What would happen then, he didn't know. 

"Bruce," he had said, in a small strangled voice. An unmistakable voice.

"Don't keep your date waiting."

He had nodded. "Right," he had said. "Sure. Okay." And he had walked out, not looking behind him. Of course Bruce had known after that. Of course he had to have known. All these years, he had to have known what Clark felt. Maybe he should have told him outright. Maybe he should have just said, _Bruce, there isn't a cell in my body that doesn't ache to touch you_. Should have said, _Bruce, sometimes I think up fantasies so dirty I'm ashamed to look at you the next day_. Should have said, _Bruce, I love you._

There would have been no surer way to spook hell out of Bruce and end their friendship. So he had taken what he could get, and made it enough. But there was still that time when Bruce had looked at him, and for all the world Clark had thought that when he was about to say, _If you wanted me to stay I would_ , Bruce was about to say, _Stay_.

But that was more of his fantasizing. 

He tugged on a jacket and made his way quietly down the stairs and out of the house, letting the crisp air and the moonlight calm him. He wasn't going to sleep anyway; he might as well wander out to his favorite view and get some quality brooding in. He leaned on the pasture fence and tried to remember the things he had worried about, the things that had seemed so important, when he had been seventeen and prone to leaning on this fence staring at the same moon-dappled stretch of pasture like it held some answers for him. 

The land was as silent tonight as it had been all those years ago.

Behind him he heard a car door shut, the crunch of Bruce's shoes. Ice must have cleared up in Wichita; he would be on his way now, and they wouldn't talk about today ever again. That was just how Bruce operated. _Hypocrite_ , said a small voice. _That's how you operate_. 

And then Bruce was leaning on the fence next to him, staring out at it with him. They stood there in silence together for a minute or two.

"Do you know," Clark said, "that for male farmers between the ages of forty and seventy, statistically speaking, suicide is a higher risk than death by accident?"

"I did not know that."

"Think about it. In a job that involves tractors and combines and threshing machines, not to mention about a thousand sharp objects, you're at greater risk of killing yourself." He shook his head. "All of which is to say, being here makes me crazy. I worry for him, I worry for them, and it makes me not right in the head. Bruce. How the hell could you ever think, in a million years, that I could hate you?"

Bruce had turned from studying the pasture to studying him. "Don't you," he said.

"Jesus. No. Bruce, how could I ever? I was an ass today, but that was—it didn't have anything to do with you. I'm sorry."

"I didn't tell you about Jagrati."

Bruce was back to looking at the pasture, and Clark fell silent, because conversations with Bruce were like this—sharp left turns, mysterious non sequiturs that connected in Bruce's head but were never adequately explained. A terrain with no maps, and you learned to follow along, or you fell off the road. "No, you didn't," he said.

"She was working as an orderly, in Patan Hospital, which was where I ended up. She mopped the floors, changed bedsheets, that sort of thing. She worked the night shift, and I was awake at nights. I was in a lot of pain, because Patan had some great surgeons but not much morphine on hand. So I was awake, when she would come to clean my room, most nights. And she would talk to me."

"In English?"

"No, she didn't know English. Nepali, mostly. She also spoke Tibetan and Hindi, a little bit of French and Gujarati. But I'd already been there three years, I dreamed in Nepali anyway."

"What did you talk about?"

"She knew what had happened to me. She knew where they'd found me, recognized the pattern of the wounds. Said I must have been strong to survive. Her brother had not survived. He had failed the combat ten, fifteen years before. They had dumped his body down a ravine. They didn't bother with driving to Kathmandu back then."

"Christ."

"Jagrati had been determined to avenge him. She was younger than he was, smaller. But she chopped off her hair, borrowed his clothes, presented herself at the monastery as his younger brother. She went through the training. She succeeded. She more than succeeded—she was the best novice they'd ever had. A natural gift, the sort of combat genius that comes along once every three or four generations."

"They didn't find out she was a girl?"

Bruce shrugged. "She said they knew, but pretended not to. Until she tried to leave. Then the monastery council condemned her to death for her deception. They commuted her sentence if she agreed never to speak of her training, never to fight, never to live as they had taught her to live. The monk who had trained her spoke for her, and out of respect for him, they let her live."

"She stayed in Nepal?"

"She had family. If she had left, she knew what they would have done to them." Bruce was silent again, and together they watched the pasture. Clark wondered if the story was over; Bruce didn't look like he was going to say any more. That too was part of conversations with Bruce, never quite knowing when they were over. Their ends were as abrupt as their beginnings. 

"But she agreed to train you," he said.

"Eventually."

More silence. Bruce was evidently changing his mind about telling this story. He wondered if it was a story he had told before, to anyone. "Anyway," Bruce said, like there had been no pause. "After I left Patan, I stayed with her. She got me back on my feet, and then taught me. I spent four years with her. Worked odd jobs like she did, to put food on the table. And every hour we weren't working, we trained. Our life was. . ." 

Clark watched him reach for the word. Sometimes that happened too: a conversation that would end in the middle of a sentence. Bruce would end a conversation before he would use an inadequate word. "Intense," he said at last. "But in a strange way—or not so strange, maybe—the happiest I've ever been. She was demanding, but she knew what I could do, knew how much was too much to ask and how much was too little. Everything I thought I had known before I came to her was a lie. I thought I knew how to meditate, thought I knew how to fight, thought I knew. . ." He shook his head. "Thought I knew how to breathe. She wasn't like anyone I could describe to you."

"You were in love with her," Clark said.

"Of course I was. She knew it, too. I didn't say anything, but I didn't have to. It was enough, just to be with her. And she was my master, I would not have disrespected her by speaking about something she would have found. . . irrelevant."

Together they watched the moon shift and the pasture darken, as clouds moved across the sky. There would be some rain by early morning, patchy fog down by the creek. The air was getting slightly warmer as the cloudcover moved in. "Did she send you back to Gotham?" Clark asked. 

"No, she wouldn't have done that. She wasn't like that, wouldn't tell you what you were meant to do with your life. Those sorts of decisions didn't hold any meaning for her. I left Nepal because I had to, because I killed her."

Clark frowned, stared at Bruce, who was just watching the darkened pasture. "I was arrogant," he said. "I'm sure that's a surprise to you. My arrogance got her killed. It was a local festival, in the outlying village where we lived—one of the nine thousand little festivals that crop up everywhere in that valley. I was watching the combat, and I wasn't thinking. I volunteered, because that's what people did—you stepped into the circle, got owned, paid your coins, everybody laughs. Only that wasn't what happened when I stepped in."

He pulled his jacket tighter around him, and Clark wondered if the dampness in the air was getting to him, if they should go inside. He wouldn't break the spell Bruce was under, though. "By the end of the day everyone in the valley was speaking of the blue-eyed warrior who fought like Mara, like the demon. And by the end of the next day, the monastery knew of it."

Bruce narrowed his eyes. "There isn't much more to tell. They knew it had been her, that she had trained me. The council condemned her to death for violating her agreement, and by the third day, she was dead. I had taken a new job, a day shift, so I was away from the apartment. But it wouldn't have mattered. They couldn't have killed her unless she had let them. They would have sent four assassins—that's the traditional number. They could have sent forty, and she could have taken them, if she had wanted. But they slit her throat and left her body there. That's where I found her, when I came home."

"So you left Nepal," Clark said, when it was clear the story was at an end.

"Eventually."

"Did you go to the police?"

Bruce snorted. "That's not how things work. That monastery—they were more powerful than the police, older than the police. It wouldn't have done any good. So instead I killed them."

Clark blinked. "You. . ."

"They voted on her death, I voted on theirs. I slit the throats of the council and burned the monastery to ashes. But that's the sort of thing the police would take an interest in, so I left Nepal and came back to Gotham. I honored her life and her death by betraying her, by betraying everything she had ever taught me. I let my rage and my grief master me so fully that I became more animal than human. And there was no Jagrati to bring me back."

He was looking at Clark now. "I'm a murderer, but I'm not a repentant one. You understand why she died. They condemned her to death for this planet's one unforgivable crime—being a woman, and being better than a man. She was on borrowed time from the minute she was born smarter, and faster, and stronger than the men in that monastery. She didn't do the thing you have to do if you have the misfortune to be born that way—she didn't pull her veil tighter and keep her eyes down. That's what you do, if you're a woman, and you want to live, in most parts of this world."

They were quiet together for a long time. Clark felt the gentle sting of the story, underneath its many layers. It had been meant for him, this old tale of unrequited love. Meant as a pat on the head—see, I know what it's like, I was in love with someone once who didn't love me back. That's the way the world works. 

Or it was meant as a warning: look how I lost control because I loved someone like that. Again with the control, again with Bruce's constant worry that he was going to go berserk and take out half the planet before Bruce could whip the kryptonite out of his belt. "I get your meaning," Clark said, and Bruce cocked his head at him.

"I doubt that. My point is. . ." He trailed off, turned around and looked at the car still running underneath the tree. Whatever he had been planning to say, he changed his mind. "I need to get going," he said.

"Bruce. I said something that wasn't true, in order to hurt you. I don't worry about you, not in that way. I get that you're pissed at me, and you should be. But I don't want you to go away thinking that. I couldn't ask for a better friend, or a better partner. Please know how sorry I am."

The things he was saying—this wasn't the way Bruce communicated. Bruce spoke in stories, in obliquities, in metaphors and silences. But it was the way he spoke. Bruce was nodding, curtly. 

"I'll see you at the League meeting next week."

"I'll be back before next week, probably next few days or so."

Bruce raised his eyebrows. "You're not staying through Thursday?"

"No, why?"

"Because it's Thanksgiving."

Shit. He had completely forgotten. He was an even more of a jerk that his first thought was _hell, there's no way I can get away now_.

"Right. I. . . forgot about that. Guess I've been a little distracted."

Bruce's gaze was penetrating, uncomfortable. Clark shifted back to looking at the pasture. "Clark. He's going to be all right. They both are."

"Right," he said again. "See you next week, then."

Bruce nodded and walked away, on his way to the car and Wichita and the airport and Gotham. There was already a layer of frost on the ground, and his shoes made a small crunching sound on the autumn-dry grass as he walked. "Hey Bruce," Clark called to him, when he was halfway to his car.

"Yeah."

"I was embarrassed."

He turned at that, the jacket tugged tight around him against the cold, his eyebrows a line of puzzlement. "At what?"

"At what my mother said."

Bruce made a snorting noise. "Clark. I know better than to believe—" He waved a hand, a small dismissive gesture. "I didn't think anything of it. Your mother has a gift for misunderstanding, obviously. I'm not an idiot." He had turned back around and was walking to the car, _crunch-crunch_ over the frost. He had opened the door, was getting in.

"She didn't misunderstand," Clark said, but quietly. Bruce was too far away to hear. 

He had forgotten how sound carried out here, on the plain, in the still night air and the frost. Bruce was turning at the car door, looking at him. What the hell; Clark shrugged. The car door was being slammed shut, but Bruce was on this side of it. _Crunch-crunch_ again, on the grass. Standing in front of Clark now, searching his face. 

"Say that again," Bruce said slowly.

* * *

Bruce's motion against him was getting faster. Clark dug his fingers in hard, wishing there wasn't fabric covering the ass his fingers were clutching. "God," he panted. "This—you—"

Bruce's groan was louder than it should have been, but he didn't care who heard them anymore. He rolled them again, ignoring the creaks of the bedsprings this time. He was on top now, and he pushed into Bruce harder, harder—Bruce gave an airless gasp and tilted his head back, shuddered—holy Christ, he was coming, Bruce was coming underneath him.

He rode it with Bruce, feeling him shake, relishing the low quiet groan of his pleasure. He was swallowing, trying to slow his breathing now. Clark had never seen anything hotter than Bruce Wayne coming in his pants and trying not to make noise. He needed, he needed—with a fumbling hand he unzipped himself, knowing he needed to come now, knowing he needed more, knowing he couldn't help himself after seeing that. There was a hand fumbling along with him, and Bruce's hand closing around his cock.

Clark turned his head to the side and bit his lip hard to keep from crying out. Bruce's hand was working him now, Bruce was jerking him. They hadn't agreed to this part, he hadn't meant to move them to bare cocks before Bruce was comfortable with that, it was just that he had needed direct touch so bad. "Bruce—God—stop, I'm—"

"Coming," Bruce said in his ear, and then he was, he was coming everywhere, slicking Bruce's hand, which didn't stop jerking him, though firmer and slower now. He kept thrusting, because the tight circle of Bruce's hand—he couldn't help but think about—

Bruce's arm was around his neck, pulling him in while he rode and thrust against Bruce. "Sor—sorry," Clark panted, when he had air.

"Kal, Kara's going to be awake any second, that was totally not as quiet as you guys think," said Kon's soft voice, pitched only for him to hear. He shut his eyes in humiliation. There were some things Bruce was better off not knowing. 

"Sorry," Clark whispered, but for Kon this time.

"No complaints here," the smart-ass kid replied. "That was hot. I'm just saying."

Tomorrow was soon enough to kill him. He was busy tonight.

"Do you—" he whispered in Bruce's ear. "If you wanted, we could move to the barn. Or—if you'd rather—" He didn't know what the expectations were here. He wasn't even completely clear how they had made it up to his bedroom from the yard. _Say that again_ , Bruce had said, and he wasn't sure if he had moved first or Bruce had, but somehow they were kissing, and he had slid a hand under Bruce's jacket, and Bruce was sliding a hand up his back, and Bruce's heart was going like a jackhammer.

"Barn sounds good," Bruce was saying. 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, probably the best way. . . I mean, it would be easiest if. . ."

"Just do it." So he got them there in super-speed—flicking on a light so Bruce could see, pulling out the heater and cranking it, spreading the horse blankets over the straw in one of the stalls. He stopped when he saw Bruce standing there, watching him with a slightly amused smile, because he knew he was racing around like a teenager with his first girl visitor, hastily kicking dirty underwear under the bed and stuffing empty Dorito bags in drawers, fluffing the pillows. Nervous. Now he got nervous. Figured. 

"Do you want to. . . we could come lie down, if you wanted. Or we could, you know. . ." He gestured vaguely.

"Play scrabble?"

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I am not very good at this."

"You're not," Bruce said. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to race back into the house and get me a clean pair of pants, because mine are. . . not very comfortable right now. While you're gone I'm going to get these off, and then we're going to lie down on one of those blankets there, and you're going to catch me up on one or two things you might have omitted to mention over the last few years."

"So . . . we're going to talk about our feelings?"

"Twenty-five words or less."

"I only need three." 

Once or twice in his life, maybe, he had stunned Bruce into silence. He could see the widening circle of Bruce's iris, hear the stutter of his heartbeat. Bruce's lips parted slightly. "I don't need to hear it back," Clark said. It was like the words were coming from someone other than him. But he had held Bruce next to him and felt him come. His arms would remember the feel of that forever. "Really I don't. And this doesn't have to happen, ever again. I'm not making any assumptions here."

Bruce had still said nothing. He watched Bruce lick his lips. "Pants," was all Bruce said. 

"Right, got it."

He arranged them with a blanket underneath and one of top of them, and the heater was even beginning to beat back the chill of the barn. Their kisses were slow and a bit tentative, after before. He kept his hips away from Bruce's, so Bruce wouldn't know he was hard again. But any plan that depended on Bruce's lack of observation was a poor one, because in the middle of a long kiss Bruce moved the heel of his hand downward to rub quite firmly and deliberately at Clark's crotch, clearly knowing what he would find there.

"Shit," Clark gasped. 

"You unzipped before," Bruce pointed out, tugging at the zipper. 

"We don't have to—I can—"

Bruce moved Clark's hand to his own zipper, and Clark got his pants open too. He ignored the thing he wanted, which was to scoot down and suckle Bruce to hardness in his mouth, because Bruce's cock in his mouth. God. What he wouldn't give. That was fantasies four through four hundred and seventy, right there—him between Bruce's knees at the console in the Batcave, Bruce's hand in his hair, the taste of Bruce's cock heavy and sweet in his mouth.

Instead he scooted them closer and kept on kissing, letting their cocks brush and trying not to moan too loud at it. Bruce's fingers dug into his hip. "Clark," he said, wrenching his mouth free. "Is there some reason you're treating me like your prom date? In case you hadn't noticed, I am the textbook definition of a sure thing."

"Sorry," he said. Bruce's bottom lip was wet. It was hard not to stare. "I just—you're going to have to give me a bit to catch up here. The idea of you liking this—it's just new to me, is all."

"I like sex, as you've recently pointed out."

Clark arched a brow. "Sex with men?"

The barest hesitation. "I'm a fast study." Both Clark's eyebrows went up at that, and Bruce hastily amended, "I didn't mean it that way. I'm not. . . completely inexperienced."

"Okay. Can you be a little more specific?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Because I want to do things you're comfortable with."

"I'm pretty comfortable right now, Clark." The small amused smile was back. The blanket was pushed down a bit, and Clark could see his abdomen, and dark hair, trailing lower, and Bruce's cock, arched over his belly. Balls and more dark hair and a stretch of rock-hard thigh. There wasn't a thing there he didn't want to lick. 

"You keep looking at me like I'm good to eat," Bruce observed, and Clark's grin became wolfish.

"You can't expect me to pass that one up," he said, and rolled over so he was pinning Bruce's wrists. There was the same sharp upward spike of breath and heartrate that he had noticed in his bedroom, when he had Bruce pinned down. He had thought it was panic, but on second thought he may have had that exactly wrong. He slid down and took Bruce's cock in his mouth, a long slow slide of tongue and lips that had Bruce's hips lifting off the straw.

" _Fuck!_ " hissed Bruce. It was a sharp, almost angry sound. "Jesus— _Christ_ ," in a long exhalation that ended in a shudder of his thighs. Clark let his fingers explore. Bruce still had his pants on, so it was a bit awkward. Too late he remembered why he wasn't going to do this, and why this was really pretty fast to be moving along, but—whoa, Bruce's pants were working down below his knees, and Bruce had just bent one leg. Maybe he was just getting more comfortable, and it wasn't explicitly an invitation. A tentative brush of finger behind his balls had Bruce arching up further, and that leg falling further to the side, so. . . yeah, maybe it was an invitation. 

He gave him pressure behind his balls, which Bruce arched into with a groan. He let the finger slip back further, let it press at Bruce's hole as he suckled. Bruce was coming undone. His own cock was dripping onto the blanket. 

He paused and raised his head. "Can we do this again?"

Bruce was trying to focus his eyes. "I—what? Do you need to re-schedule?"

"No, I just. . . fuck, I'm sorry, but if this is not ever going to happen again then yes, please can I fuck you. But if—if we can do this again, then I want to take our time, I don't want to—"

"For fuck's sake, what answer gets me off faster?"

He lowered his mouth and sucked him down fiercely and entire, and as small punishment pushed his fingers firmly at Bruce's entrance, slipping just a little way inside. Bruce cried out at it—actually cried out, God he was going to remember that sound forever—and began thrusting into Clark's mouth, then back slightly on his finger. Holy hells, sweet goddamn. Bruce was too tight for him to get much inside, but it was evidently enough to give him what he needed. Those hands were in Clark's hair, and if he was that rough with everybody he was with. . . but he wasn't, of course. This was just with him. 

"Clark," he panted. "I'm coming—I'm—"

And he was, a hot wave of musky sweet, in Clark's mouth and tight as a vise on Clark's finger, those heavy beautiful balls drawn up firm against Clark's chin, shooting all that lovely come down his throat. His lack of gag reflex meant he could feel Bruce's come dripping all the way down his throat, meant that Bruce could grunt and push that cock even further down him. He was drowning in too-large cock, drowning in Bruce. 

Bruce fell back, winded, finished. Clark pressed kisses to the inside of his thigh. Not a drop of come anywhere, because it was all down his throat. Bruce was just breathing hard and watching him. "I don't know how to do that," he said. 

"I know," Clark said. "Can you—what you did before. . ." And he lay down beside Bruce, on his back. He was so hard that any movement was almost painful. Bruce wrapped a hand around him and jerked him, slowly, watching him. Bruce's fingers were exploring a little, on his shaft, as he went up and down. Clark bit his lip. 

"I need it harder," he whispered, because Jesus God, Bruce had just come down his throat, his cock was going to go off like a rocket. He was so wet he was almost embarrassed to have Bruce touch him. He was uncut, and Bruce was cut, and Bruce was clearly exploring that aspect a bit, moving his fingers enough to rub at his whole shaft, only—God, he was so cranked, he was going to lose it, Bruce's fingers on him, Bruce's hand. . .

"You're big," Bruce said, and Clark managed a choked laugh, because Bruce had just been knocking out his tonsils, the hypocrite. "But I think fucking would work, if you want to try it. I want you to. We could."

"Oh—oh _fuck_ —"

Bruce scooted closer, so he was spooning Clark. "Now this I'm good at," he murmured. "I get plenty of practice."

"Do—do you."

"You better believe it." Bruce's finger tipped Clark's jaw, turned his face closer to Bruce. "Let me see you, when you come."

Clark gasped and came in a white explosion of sound, his mouth opened on a silent rictus of ecstasy, just at the thought of Bruce beating himself off. He swam through fog and came to himself to find Bruce's arms wrapped around him, the mess cleaned off him already. "There's a lot you can do that I can't," Bruce's voice said, warm in his ear, a graveled rumble. "I can't say the things you can so easily. Will you forgive me for that?"

He turned into Bruce's arms. "Yes," he said. 

"There was this guy at St. Paul's, one form ahead of me," Bruce said. "In answer to your question before."

"I see." 

"Mutual hand jobs, that sort of thing. He was. . . his feelings for me were deeper than mine for him, which fooled me into thinking that because I didn't have feelings for this particular person that I could not have feelings for any male, in that way."

"Okay."

"It left me unprepared for the experience of those feelings, when they did happen."

"At Princeton?"

Bruce reared back a bit and frowned at him. "No, I meant. . . I was talking about you."

Clark digested that. Holy shit. Bruce had gone from clumsy teenage hand jobs to Clark pushing him down and grinding on top of him and. . . shit. He tried not to let his shock show on his face. Holy, holy shit. Because of some locker room antics thirty years ago, Bruce thought. . . holy shit. "That doesn't exactly make you not straight, you know," he said evenly. "Fooling around like that, when you were younger."

"I realize that," Bruce said in irritation. 

"Even if it had gone further, it wouldn't have necessarily meant—"

"I realize that too."

"It doesn't make you not straight, just because you—"

"And what does fantasizing for ten years about my best friend make me?"

He acknowledged the justice of that. He nestled a little closer, with a small grin. "Just gosh darn lucky, I guess." Bruce swatted at his head. This, this he could do. He could do this forever. 

"Do we need a plan for when your father comes in here in the morning?"

Clark yawned. "It will be fine." 

"I believe you made some promises about not scaring the cows."

He cracked an eye. "They look untraumatized to me." He re-settled, though he did pull up his pants a bit, just in case they fell asleep like this. His dad might not be easily scandalized, but there was such a thing as being considerate. Bruce pulled the blanket higher around them—carefully keeping the messy end away from them, he noted. 

The blanket made a scratchy pillow, but Bruce was warm next to him. He tracked the slowing of Bruce's heartbeat for a while, before letting himself begin to drift. He was jerked back to the borderland of consciousness by a soft voice he thought at first was Kon again, until he realized Bruce had spoken. "Four words," he said quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not realize until after I had composed this section how similar Jagrati's story is to the story of Cassandra in _Gotham Knight_ , which I watched later. Jagrati is not intended to be a re-telling of Cassandra, and I'm not trying to mess with that character. I mention it for those who might be confused by the narrative threads, not as a protest of my own originality, which would be pretty ironic considering I write fanfic.


	4. Chapter 4

"Who the heck is that," Jonathan Kent said, standing at the kitchen window for mid-morning coffee the next day. He was up long before the dawn, most days, breaking for a brief breakfast around seven, and by ten-thirty, most of his day's work was done. Clark knew his dad did not like interruptions in his mid-morning rest, so the scowl at the truck edging around the curve of the driveway was understandable. 

"Don't know," he said, setting his coffee cup in the sink beside his father's. "Looks like animals?"

"It's Furmoy," his dad said with a sigh. "God bless it. Bringing us two sows. I told him six weeks ago I needed to put that off until after the first of the year, at least. That twerp. Now he's going to pretend he doesn't remember my saying that. I'm blessed if I'll pay for those sows."

But it wasn't sows, and it wasn't Furmoy. It was some guy Clark had never seen before, and by the time they made it outside, he had backed up the big white animal transport and was opening up the gate. Kon and Kara had come from the barn where they were stacking hay, and Bruce was there watching too. 

"What in the Sam Hill—" his dad began, and then the guy was walking the first horse down the ramp. 

"Whoa," Kon said, which was only what Clark was thinking. A beautiful sorrel filly whose dished head spoke of Arabian in there somewhere was prancing down the ramp, tugging at her lead and tossing her head. 

"Dad," Clark said with a frown. "Did you—"

"No I absolutely did not, and you're going to march that pretty filly right back into that van, because of all the outlays we can't afford, that's the—"

"I'm afraid this is my fault," Bruce said, and Clark's head snapped to him with sudden comprehension. "You didn't," he said, and Bruce ignored him.

"Jonathan, I hope I haven't overstepped. I had an idea when Kara and I were out the other day, and I was hoping you wouldn't mind. Careful," he said sharply to the second of the two men unloading the van. He was bringing out a slightly larger horse, a dapple-gray stallion this time. Bruce patted the stallion on the rump. "Kon, Kara, I think the time has come for some riding lessons."

Kara's eyes widened. "Oh," she said in sudden alarm. "Okay. Um. Gosh, they're pretty, but I'm really not sure—"

"You'll be fine," Bruce said. "You've got a natural seat. Come here, take her lead," and he held out the rope attached to the filly's halter. 

"Heel," she tried, jerking on the lead. Clark smiled and caught Bruce's eye. _Well done, you_ , he telegraphed, but Bruce was still looking at him a bit anxiously, like he might have still been worried Clark would not approve. 

"Not like that," Bruce was saying to Kara. "She's going to pick up on every one of your emotions. Think of that lead like a line that connects your thoughts to hers. So you have to keep your thoughts even and steady, your emotions controlled, if you want her to listen to you. That's it, you've got it," and he gave the filly's rump a reassuring pat as Kara began to lead her in a circle. 

"Maybe we could just get another dog," she said. "Or some goats? Goats are good." Bruce rested a hand on her shoulder.

"Nonsense, you're doing fine." Clark could see that steadying hand transmit calm to her, which then traveled like an electrical charge down the lead to the filly, who swung her head lower, easing her gait. Over in the corner of the paddock, Kon and the stallion were already investigating each other, and Kon appeared to have a natural touch, stroking up and down the animal's sides, which surprised him. Of the two of them he would have picked Kon for the one most likely to be made nervous by horses.

"Son of a—" There was a muffled cry from the back of the horse van, and some heavy thuds as of larger hooves. "She fucking bit me," a second guy said, leading a third horse down the ramp. Clark's breath caught in his throat.

A mare, but over-large for a mare, he could see that at once. It would be counted as a fault in her conformation, despite the fact that she was perfectly in proportion. She stood eighteen hands if she was an inch. Her bay coat rippled and shone, and she picked her one white-marked foot up and stamped it, shaking her mane in impatience. Clearly she did not think much of whoever was handling her. "Fucking bitch," the man muttered, cuffing the side of her head with a closed fist. A grip of iron closed on his wrist, and Clark saw the man startle, rear back.

"Raise your hand to her again, and you will regret it," Bruce said quietly.

"Fuck you man, this mare's a demon. You can't let 'em get away with shit like that. I know horses, you gotta learn how to handle 'em, like any other woman."

"That the way you handle women?" The grip on the man's wrist had tightened, Clark noted. The man's face had gone a bit white. "I can think of one or two women I'd like to introduce you to. Hand me that lead and get back in the van, you're done here." Clark heard the small pop of the man's ulnar notch as Bruce increased the pressure just enough to crack it. There was a choked whimper in the man's throat, and then he was backing up the ramp, quickly, eyes as wild and terrified as the mare's.

"Shh," Bruce was saying to her, stroking her muzzle. "It's all right, beautiful."

"She's gorgeous," Clark said.

"Isn't she? I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't pass her up. She was going for nothing, because of her size — most buyers who want to ride a mare don't want an animal this big, and riders looking for a horse this size only want stallions. Idiots," he said, still stroking her muzzle. She was angling her head to get a better look at him, tossing it nervously. 

Clark ran a tentative hand down her side, and watched the ripple travel her skin. "A thoroughbred," he said. "She's unbelievable. Are you going to have her shipped back to Gotham?"

"Well," Bruce said. "That long a drive would be hard on her. Jonathan, do you think you have room to stable three? I should have been clear, I expect to pay stabling fees comparable to what I would pay back East—though in all honesty I should pay more, because I'm sure the care they'll receive here will be far superior."

"Well," his father said. It was clear the idea of taking money from Bruce didn't sit well with him. The stabling fees was a nice touch; it would allow Bruce to send money to the farm while bypassing him entirely. No one ever said Bruce wasn't clever. 

"I bought some tack, too," Bruce was saying. "I wasn't sure how much you'd kept here. She was an impulse purchase, really—foolish, in retrospect. Don't know how often I'll be out here in order to ride her. Clark, you'll be here more than I will, so I'm trusting you'll look after her for me."

Clark's hand froze on its downward stroke, because honestly, he hadn't seen it coming. So that was the meaning of Bruce's anxious glances. For him. Bruce had bought her for him. That bastard. 

He didn't say anything for a minute. Becoming curious about what he was doing, the mare swung her neck his direction. They regarded each other for a moment. He wished he had some sugar or something to offer her, but she looked like she would disdain such bribery. "Hard to believe you found her around here," Clark murmured.

"That's how it works sometimes, with extraordinary things. She's beautiful, but she doesn't really belong. Doesn't belong anywhere, truth is." 

_Subtle, Bruce_. He allowed himself a small smile. "You should have asked," he said.

"You would have said no."

"I don't like being ambushed."

"I know." Bruce's eyes were grave. 

Clark rested a hand on her back, judging her skittishness at it. She seemed untroubled by the hand, and he increased the pressure on her withers, but she remained calm—intent on him, watching him, but not twitchy or nervous. In a smooth motion he pulled himself up and swung a leg over her, bareback. She jerked her head and snorted. "I did ask," he reminded her. 

She backed a bit, tossing her head, and he kept his hand steady on her neck, murmuring to her. Funny how it all came back to him. There were years there, growing up, when he'd been astride more than he'd been walking—years where being on a horse felt more natural than being on his own legs, or even than flying. This, this middle space, this zone between walking and flying, this space inhabited only by himself and this marvelous other creature, who cared nothing for aliens and other worlds but knew only life and breath and muscle and this moment where they were together, their bodies one: this was what he had missed.

Bruce was watching him with an odd look on his face, and a small smile. Clark swung down, and looped her lead over the fencepost. His father was talking to the first man, the driver of the van. "I need to show you where the tack goes," Clark said to Bruce. "Come with me." He strode off into the barn, Bruce following.

"I saw the other day where the tack goes. It's not hard to figure out what the—" He was silenced by Clark's mouth on his, by Clark pushing him back into the wall. Bruce wasn't slow to respond. He made a small noise in his throat that went straight to Clark's groin. 

"You," Clark said. Bruce's fingers were shaking slightly, and Clark saw him swallow.

"So you forgive me."

"Meet you in the barn tonight," Clark husked. He had him pressed to the wall, and notched his hips up against Bruce's, rocking into him. 

"Or," Bruce said, licking his lips, "we could just take a long time searching for the tack room right now."

"I think they'll get a little suspicious."

"Of what? Everyone out there knows exactly what we're doing, and is pretending not to."

"You're talking too much, just kiss me." 

Bruce's mouth was as hungry as his, and his hands were getting explore-y, up and down Clark's back, curling into his ass. "Tonight," Clark said softly, releasing him. 

"Clark, come on—" Bruce's voice was just as soft, but Clark laughed gently, heading out the dark of the barn to daylight. His mother had come outside now, too, and he could hear her laughing and calling to Kon and Kara, could hear the sound of hoofbeats trotting across the pasture.

* * *

"No, Ma—please, please stop," Clark begged, but Bruce was the closest he'd ever seen him to tears of laughter, so it was hard to protest his own humiliation too much. 

"But then Clark said, 'Mama, I don't care, I'm going to wear it anyway,' and nothing—but nothing—was going to persuade him—Jonathan, do we still have the pictures of that pink velvet riding hat with the sparkly pom-poms and the—"

"NO!" roared Clark, and the rest of the table collapsed in laughter, Bruce loudest of all. "For God's sake, Ma, leave me a little dignity, will you?"

"Oh, foo, don't be that way," she said, swatting at him with her napkin. "I thought it was very progressive of you!"

"It was burgundy," he protested. "A very light burgundy."

"Nope, not really, son," his father said, reaching for the mashed potatoes with a grin. "Anyway, the point is, Clark was quite the horseman, back in the day. Stylish, too. Why, did he ever tell you about his first idea for a costume?"

"Oh God Dad no," Clark breathed. 

"Oh, Ponyman! I remember that!" his mother exclaimed, and Bruce's face was all sweetly rapt attention. "Goodness, he couldn't have been more than six—right when he was first learning about his powers, and figuring out how to use them. He had all these elaborate sketches with designs on them for a costume—sort of a thing with ears, wasn't it, honey? And a pony tail out the back? Oh wait just a minute, I bet we've got those sketches in that box up in the attic! I'll be right back."

Clark groaned, sliding further in his seat. "Ponyman," Bruce said, slowly and with relish. "You know, I don't think he ever mentioned it. Martha, you want me to help you look for that box?" Clark aimed a vicious kick at him under the table, which should actually have hurt, but Bruce just laughed. Instead Bruce's leg trapped his own, and. . . didn't move. 

After that he didn't much care, even when his mother eventually found the Box of Exquisite Humiliation and began dragging out every elementary school class photograph. Bruce's leg was resting against his, under the table. Bruce's eyes, glancing at him from across the table, were warm and dark and full of illicit promise. Bruce's mouth tilted up in a small smile, and the lines on his face were eased so that almost you might believe they were laugh lines. He was beautiful. Clark could stare at him all night, and began earnestly poking at his green beans when he became aware he was, in fact, staring. The pressure of the leg against his increased. He looked up and put everything into his eyes, just let it sit there, and he read it right back in Bruce's, and together they rested in it, right there at his parents' kitchen table under the warm overhead light while his mother chattered away and his father chuckled and Kon and Kara battled it out in the living room.

After dinner, Bruce and his father chased the teenagers away from the video games with threats about the destruction of brain cells and the importance of reading books, and took over. Clark watched their quiet but intense round of Halo from the kitchen, where he dried dishes with his mother. His father did all right, and though he suspected Bruce was taking hits he didn't need to so his father wouldn't lose by too wide a margin, he couldn't prove it. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you," his mother said quietly, handing him another bowl.

"About what?" He watched his father narrowly evade a bloody death, and he was all but certain a muttered curse word might have possibly escaped his lips. 

"About yesterday morning," she said, and it took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about. "Honey, I'm just so sorry. What I said—it was just unforgivable."

"Oh!" He felt a bit guilty at the look of acute misery on her face. "Ma. Seriously, don't worry about it."

"Sweetheart, of course I worry about it. You know me—my mouth gets in gear before I really even think, sometimes. I just didn't even stop to think—"

"Ma." He put a hand on her arm. "Really. It's not a big deal. I just overreacted. I'm sorry I swore at you. It was—it was fine."

She was folding her dishtowel, and looking at him uncertainly. "When you told me about how you felt, two years ago. . . I just assumed. . . "

"I know, Ma. Honestly, no harm done, all right?"

"Okay, sweetie, if you say so. I guess I'm just getting old, I don't stop to think—not that I was ever great at that in the first place."

He smiled, and pulled her into a hug. He could tuck her easily under his chin, wrap his body around her delicate bones. He could remember that night two years ago, sitting up late at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around mugs of tea, talking into the night in quiet voices so as not to wake his father. It was back when he knew things were disintegrating with Lois past his ability to fix them, and—worse still—knew that his motivation to try was low, because always in the back of his head there was Bruce, and always there was the guilt of that, the shame of continually pushing that down. His mother had a canny way of looking at you and knowing exactly what the real trouble was, and when she had said, "there's someone else, isn't there?" he had seen no reason not to tell her the truth. It had felt good to say it to someone, at least. 

And now. . . he smiled as he hugged her. Kon wandered in, and he chucked a dishtowel at him. "Here you go," he said. "Tag, you're it. I'm going to go ref that battle in there, maybe put some money down."

"Hope you don't plan on betting against Bat—" Clark's sharp look brought him up short, and he saw Kon's horror at what he had almost said. "Against that—that. . ."

Clark seized his upper arm and dragged him into the hallway. His mother was running more water for suds, and not paying any attention, but that wasn't the point. "Goddammit, Kon," he hissed, still gripping him. "You be careful, do you understand me? One mistake is one mistake too many. One careless word is all it takes. Bruce's identity is his protection, and I will _not_ have you endanger that. I will lock you on the Watchtower for the next ten years before I will let you endanger him. Got it?"

"Got it. I'm—I'm sorry." The kid was pale, and too late he realized his fists were balled in Kon's shirt, and Kon's feet were off the floor as he pushed him against the wall. He released him, and calmed his breathing. "Kal. I haven't ever—wouldn't ever—"

"I know. Just. . . be careful, all right?"

"I will. I guess I just thought—since you guys are—" Clark's sharp look was back, and Kon swallowed. "I mean. . . you are, right? He's the guy, isn't he? The guy you were talking about, the other day?"

Around the corner in the living room, he could hear his father's whoop of exultation as he cleared another kill. _Come on, that was a lucky shot_ , Bruce was saying, and Clark could hear the smile in his voice. "Yeah," he said. "He's the guy."

"So the two of you are together now?"

He looked at the careful curiosity in Kon's face. Probably the kid was trying to figure out if this helped or hindered his cause with Tim. "That's not really your business," he said, but a small treacherous part of him echoed the kid's question: are we? They hadn't had any conversation like that, at all. But there hadn't really been time. Twenty-four hours was a bit soon for a conversation like that. But Bruce would have to get back to Gotham in the morning. . .

"Go help Ma," he said, heading into the living room.

Those questions evaporated in the barn that night. Bruce was so hungry for him, so all over him. They had waited until the house was asleep before moving out to the barn. The cold snap had relented by a few degrees, at least enough to make it bearable to wrap in blankets and sit on the porch while they passed the time. They had stayed on the porch swing, rocking and talking, Bruce's thigh pressed against his. Once they got to the barn they were in no mood to wait. They were barely through the barn doors before they were pushing off clothes and kissing and tugging each other down to the straw. Bruce moved down and swallowed his cock before he realized what Bruce was doing. "Fucking Jesus Christ hell fuck oh goddamn," he panted in a single breath as Bruce's mouth slid up and down his shaft. " _Fuck_ , Bruce."

"You do have a mouth on you after all," said Bruce's voice in the dark, thick and rich with amusement. His voice tasted like rum and syrup. He arched into that mouth, that voice. He was fucking the Batman voice. He was going to lose control fast.

"Okay, wait, let's—move your mouth," he gasped. Bruce was suckling faster. Bruce had known he was hard already, sitting on the porch. "Bruce, I'm gonna come." 

Bruce pulled off and rested his chin on Clark's thigh, comtemplatively. "Do you not want to?"

"I—yes. I mean—no, not yet. Not like—no."

"Why?" Bruce was rubbing an idle finger up and down his shaft. A thick glob of pre-cum slid down him, and Bruce wet his finger, rubbed a little harder. 

"We can ease into things," Clark said, trying to make his voice sound normal.

"I see," Bruce said. "This is the part where you decide what I'm ready to do?"

"I didn't mean—you can— _please_ ," he sobbed, because Bruce's finger increased its speed, just slightly. 

"'Please' meaning you want to come?"

"I do, I—come on, just—"

"Mm, well, that's going to be a problem. Because I see that your objective here is to keep me away from come, right? It might freak me a little, if I had too much up-close contact with your come. And then this whole thing would be over." The single finger had become two fingers, rubbing up and down on either side of his shaft. 

"Stop teasing," Clark whispered. 

"I'm not the one teasing. Do you want to come, or don't you?"

Clark seized the back of his head. "Just fucking suck me," he groaned, and for reward Bruce's mouth was back on him, heaven, it was heaven, it was hot and wet and lewd. He spurted soon and hard, fingers shaking in Bruce's shoulders. He was riding Bruce's mouth. "God, I'm—sorry," he managed, because Bruce wouldn't stoop to a gag, but that was definitely a cough. "Oh God."

Bruce climbed up and held him, and that—that was what made him groan again, right there, Bruce wrapping him and kissing the side of his forehead in random inexplicable tenderness. He could see how hard Bruce was, how slick that thick beautiful shaft was with pre-come. "I have an idea," Clark whispered. 

"Yeah?" Bruce was taking his hand and closing it around his own cock, pushing up into Clark's fingers. "Tell me."

It was maybe not the brilliant idea he had initially thought, he realized ten minutes later when he was bent over a hay bale while Bruce fucked the ever-living hell out of him. There was a strong hand on his back, and one curled around his hip, and he gasped at the amount of pressure inside him and around him. Bruce's cock inside him felt like it was rearranging him, in every possible meaning of the word. 

"God, just—slower, a bit slower," he managed, reaching a hand to Bruce's hip. Bruce slowed his pace instantly, rubbed a hand up and down his back. 

"Sorry. You okay?"

He swallowed. If it just didn't feel so damn good. There was pain and then these sharp spikes of pleasure, and he didn't know, couldn't tell what order they were coming in; he felt laid bare. "Fine. I'm good. Just—out of practice, that's all."

"Mm." Bruce was bent all the way over him now, kissing the base of his neck, and the change in angle was. . . he couldn't even find adjectives right now. Painful, startling, excruciatingly wonderful. "How out of practice?"

"What—what do you mean?"

The hand that was rubbing him stilled. "Clark," came the soft voice. "Have you done this before?"

"Of course," he said. 

"There's a lot of things you're good at," Bruce said. "Lying is not one of them. Just my luck, to fall in love with the alpha wolf. Okay, hold on, I'm going to ease out. Bear down."

"No! Just—oh fuck fuck _fuck_ —"

"Clark talk to me." He could hear a thread of panic in Bruce's voice.

"That—there. That felt. . . so good." 

"There?"

"Oh God."

"Yes? Okay baby, I've got you. Just relax." Clark breathed out and let himself go limp in Bruce's arms. It should have felt ridiculous, Bruce calling him that, Bruce treating him like he was made of glass. But the spike of pleasure was taking over his body, was sharper than anything he had ever known, felt like it was lancing up his cock, fucking his balls, and he spread his legs wider for it. He could hear Bruce make a small moaning noise when he did that. "Shit," was Bruce's soft exhalation.

"Don't—don't come yet," Clark panted, and he got a hand around his cock, tugging. 

"I can reach you, but I'll have to—change the angle—a bit," Bruce said, and Clark knocked away his hand. 

"God no don't stop—yes, God, just fuck me—"

Bruce's groan at that was louder. "Faster—can I go faster—"

"Fuck yes, fuck—"

Bruce was fucking him hard now, right at that spot that was making nebulae explode behind his eyes and nerves explode in his balls. "Clark," Bruce said, and his teeth were gritted, his voice hoarse. "Are you—I can't—"

"Fuck oh fuck oh—" Clark's orgasm was warm and thick on his hands, on the hay bale, on the blanket. "Nngh, it's— _fuck_ —"

Bruce's fingers were digging into his hips. Bruce had stilled. Bruce was groaning, Bruce was spilling inside him, small shallow thrusting motions, and he could feel it, could feel Bruce coming inside him. They didn't move, just stood there clinging to each other and letting the pleasure seize them, obliterate them. The backs of his eyes stung with it.

They lay drifting on the horse blankets for a long time afterward. Clark was stretched full length, head on Bruce's bent arm. Bruce was doing something odd with his hair, carding fingers through it. "Want me to grow it?" Clark murmured.

"Hmm," said Bruce, considering. "Don't do that again," he said, after a pause. "Lie to me in bed like that."

"How about out of bed?"

"Not a fan of that either." The hand was still stroking his hair. 

"I know. Sorry." Clark pulled the hand down to him, spread the fingers, held the palm to his face and kissed it: warm and callused and smelling of come. "You have to get out of here in the morning, or Alfred's going to kill you. You can't miss Thursday."

"I know," Bruce sighed. "Of all the ridiculous things. For an Englishman he's awfully obsessed with Thanksgiving."

"Who's coming?"

Bruce shifted, stretched a bit. "The Gordons, actually. Jim and Barbara. Other than that, just family—Dick and Tim and Damian, who might possibly be persuaded to be civil at the table for forty-five minutes. I'll ask Jim to keep his side-arm, just in case. I'm sure Alfred will have made some excruciating overture to Jason, which I'm equally sure will have been rejected when Alfred tells him I'm going to be there. Alfred will be sure not to tell me about it, though. Maybe I'll just stay here."

"Mm. Wish you could." Clark pulled the other hand to him and began working on that one. 

"When we get back," Bruce said, and Clark winced.

"We don't have to talk about that now."

"Yes, we do."

They lay there in silence, still stretched around and next to each other. "Clark. We need to keep this from affecting our work."

Clark cocked a skeptical brow at him. "Come on, don't give me that. We've had strong feelings for each other for a long time, and it's only strengthened our work together, never hindered it. Nothing has changed."

Bruce propped himself on an elbow. "The fact that you believe that is what worries me. Everything has changed. For me it has, anyway."

He looked at Bruce, at that. Brushed the back of his finger against that too-sharp jaw. "Me too," he said.

"Then let's acknowledge that, and talk about ways to control this."

"Control it?" He smiled, bit back a laugh. "Come on, Bruce."

"I'm serious."

"Because of course you are. Look. You want some assurance from me that I'm not going to jump your bones while on duty at the Watchtower? That I'm not going to make suggestive remarks at League meetings? You got it. I officially promise not to slap you on the ass, make kissy noises, or otherwise do things that we would never have done anyway but that you somehow need to hear me say I won't do. Okay? That good enough?"

Bruce's eyes were dangerous. "Don't dismiss this," he said. "There are times and places when we can afford to be. . . this way with each other, and times and places we cannot."

"Okay, I'll bite. Why don't you give me the list of times and places, then. Are Thursdays out? Sundays and bank holidays?"

He saw Bruce hesitate. "Gotham and Metropolis are a bad idea." 

"As in. . . having sex in them? Are you. . . wait, really?"

"I think we need to have a very specific place, that we can retreat to. I need that. Clark. Can you understand that?"

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Yes," he said. "I can. I don't like it, but if that's what you need, we will figure it out." It was a starting point, anyway. Once Bruce was more comfortable. . . "Where did you have in mind?"

"I think. . . I think, for now, here."

He opened his eyes. "Here. Here as in, the farm?"

"Yes."

Clark let out a sigh. "Okay. So, your idea is, every time we want to have sex—or even make out, I'm assuming—I whisk you halfway across the country? Please tell me you see how unworkable that is. Traveling at superspeed for that distance—that would be really unpleasant for any human, and I'm not sure how much like making out you're going to feel after a nice hearty round of throwing up."

"The farm is a safe place, a perfectly reasonable choice," Bruce insisted. "I see your point about the superspeed, though."

"Thank you."

"I can travel by plane."

Clark knew he was looking at Bruce like he was demented. Bruce was perfectly calm, though. "By _plane_. Every time we want to make out. Bruce, at that rate, we'll have a physical relationship with each other about once every six months."

"I was thinking, once a year."

Bruce's face was as calm as before. "You what," Clark said. 

"Clark, be rational," Bruce was saying, but he could make no sense of the words that followed. Couldn't really hear them, the truth was. He caught the gist of them, though, and phrases swooped in and out of his hearing: _control this so it doesn't control us_ , that was a recurring one, along with _every twelve months we can have this_ and _getting our jobs done_ and verbs like _contain_ and _control_ and _manage_ and _control control control_. He just sat there and listened to all of it, and he wondered if his lack of response was concerning Bruce at all. 

He also wondered how long Bruce had had this little speech prepared. Exactly how long after kissing him for the first time had it taken Bruce to arrange this in his head? Or was it an impromptu thing he had come up with just tonight, while fucking him? Honestly he couldn't feel a thing. Certainly no anger or pain or frustration or anything but a great sadness, sinking like a weight in his chest, and a certain inevitability. He became aware Bruce had stopped talking, and was looking at him. He tried to think of words; tried to think of everything his father had called recalcitrant sows and broken-down tractors and pusillanimous agricultural loan officers.

"Coward," he said, finally. He savored the epithets, taking his time. "You're a coward, you cocksucking, motherfucking, everloving son of a goddamned _bitch_." 

In the silence that followed he rose and gathered his things, calmly putting on his pants, buttoning his shirt. Bruce had risen too, and was standing there, white-faced in the moonlight, watching him. The obscenity of having this conversation while Bruce's come was still dripping out of his body made him want to be ill. He pulled on his jacket. Bruce was still immobile.

"Don't ever tell me you love me again," Clark said, and walked out.


	5. Chapter 5

And that, unsurprisingly, was that.

Life continued as normal, once he was back home: a job to go to, stories to write, leads to chase, and every now and again, a world to save. League meetings to attend, and at first those had been difficult, because of course Bruce was there. But there was the cowl working in his favor. Bruce's eyes never came close to meeting his, and he never so much as glanced Bruce's direction. He knew his own face could be a steely mask, when he chose. 

They continued to work together, and work together well. They communicated about the job, and about other things when necessary. If he concentrated, he found it possible to sit at League meetings and listen to Bruce talking and not hear his voice saying the things it had said to him. He could pretend not to know the taste of the hollow of Bruce's throat, or the exact pressure of his lips, or the small sounds he made when he was about to come. It was possible, he discovered, to forget anything.

Kara came to Metropolis, so he had that to help him over the forgetting. He didn't bother to consult Bruce on that decision, and Bruce wisely forbore to question him on it. She was ready, though, more than ready to assume her place at his side. She had her own apartment (not too far from his) and he kept close tabs on her. He called her every day, and tried to make plans with her every weekend. Maybe his tabs were a little too close, because once when he called to see if she wanted him to take her to a movie on Saturday after he had already taken her to a movie on Friday she had said, "Um, listen, don't take this the wrong way, but. . . do you have any other friends?"

Not particularly, he discovered. 

Always before, when he had been at loose ends or in need of company, there was Bruce — there was the cave he could go sit in, and talk to him while he worked; there was a screen he could flip on, a communicator he could tap, just some quick way to connect. He had never thought of it as a big deal. He had never realized that Bruce took up a huge part of his life, until suddenly there was a giant sucking hole where Bruce had been. 

In time, they would probably get over it. Eventually, the curt formality of their interactions would soften, would ease. Bruce would say something wry, and in spite of himself, he would snort a laugh. Bruce would smile, just a little bit, at having made him laugh. They might find themselves having a conversation about Kara, or about Dick, or about something that didn't involve the League. They would be short conversations, at first. But then longer ones, maybe, as they both became more comfortable with their new parameters. It could even be that one day, years from now, Bruce might say, _I'm sorry about what happened, back in Smallville that time_. And Clark would give a rueful laugh and say, _don't worry about it. We both have a lot to be sorry for._

It didn't mean there wouldn't be a dead thing in his chest, for the rest of his days. 

Plenty of people lived like that, all their life. Diana, for one—she talked and laughed and got her job done and led her own strange, fascinating life, and all the time she was bleeding out for Steve Trevor. There wasn't anything anyone could do about that one. His own situation was better, slightly: he could see Bruce, he had the comfort of knowing he lived and was young and healthy and alive. 

Some days, that was almost enough. 

He did end up in the cave once, a few weeks after that Thanksgiving. It was purely work-related: Bruce was working on an anti-toxin and needed the speed of his Kryptonian eyes to examine some algorithms. Dick had been there, too, and Tim, so it wasn't like they had ever been alone. Bruce had been very careful about that. But he had thought they could at least exchange a word or two that wasn't overheard by everyone else; he had thought they could at least get to that point. Bruce had been at his workstation, and while Tim and Dick bickered about something at another bank of monitors, Clark had walked over to where Bruce was working. Bruce had risen hastily and made for another part of the cave, but it wasn't even the clumsy rudeness of that: it was that Bruce had quickly thrown a cloth over what he had been working on. He had covered it, probably not even consciously. It was just what Bruce did, when he was working on things, and someone else walked up. Clark had seen him do it in the Watchtower a thousand times, and never thought anything of it because it had never happened to him. Bruce had never hidden anything from him. 

_Well fuck you too_ , he had thought angrily, and walked back over to talk to Dick. 

Perry's decision that Clark would be the one covering the annual Wayne Christmas charity ball was just the icing on the cake. "That doesn't really make sense," he said, a bit desperately. "Sheldon's metro, society events ought to be his beat. And I've got—well, I've got that piece on the longshoremen's union that I really need to be working on, and—"

"Sheldon's got bronchitis, have a little human compassion," Perry barked at him. "And I'm sure you're gonna be curled up doing some editing at ten on a Friday evening."

"Actually, that's not an unreasonable expectation of Smallville's social life," Lois said with a grin, pushing at his chair with her foot, and he swatted at her ankle, intentionally missing. Her grin deepened. 

"I'll need a date," he said, but she laughed. 

"Oh no you don't, this is your assignment, I'm not getting roped into that. Any other Wayne party, sure, I am absolutely your girl, but not that monstrous nightmare. Forty thousand people, three bands, and a line for the bar that looks like that thing at Epcot, with the really long lines."

"Soarin," Jimmy supplied.

"Is that the one? The hang-glider thing?"

"Oh yeah, that's totally the one. Once my folks waited like three hours for that. And fastpass doesn't even work with that one, you're better off just running the minute the gates open, and even then you're gonna wait like forty-five minutes."

"Do you mind?" Perry sighed. Clark chewed his pencil and calculated avenues of escape. 

But none appeared, so on the evening of the twenty-first of December there he stood, wedged into some anteroom in Wayne Manor, standing around like an idiot, wondering just how much longer his torture was going to last. Perry had made it clear he was obligated to stay until both the mayor of Metropolis and the president of Gotham General's board spoke. But surely there was a way to get a copy of their remarks without having to wait around for hours on end like the world's most awkward potted plant. 

His only consolation was, he was unlikely to see the host. Bruce was no doubt buried in the middle of a press of people, shaking hands and making fatuous small talk, and they wouldn't come in contact tonight. Even if he did happen to see Clark, Bruce wouldn't initiate conversation; Bruce Wayne had no reason to talk to a mid-level reporter at the _Planet_ , or any reporter at all that wasn't doing a puff piece. He checked his watch. At least another forty-five minutes until the speakers, and even then he might not be able to cram himself into the ballroom, with that press of people. Well, he could fly up to the dais, then, get himself a prime spot. He imagined the horrified faces. _How about we just move beyond that, Mr. Mayor, and you read your fucking statement so I can report it and go home?_

He pushed through the wall of people and made his slow way to one of the doors onto the terrace. A glass of eggnog looked good, or maybe a flute of champagne, but Lois had been right about the line at the bars, and the trays that got passed around weren't coming anywhere near him. If Alfred spotted him, he would be sure to grab him something, but the last person he wanted to see was Alfred, or any of the family who might report his presence. With luck, he could get in and get out of Wayne Manor, and Bruce would never even see the byline, never even know he had been here. It wasn't that he thought Bruce would mind; it was that he knew Bruce wouldn't. 

The December cold meant he had little company outside, other than a few especially drunk people laughing like loons out on the terrace and too wasted to realize it was about sixteen degrees, with a wind chill of four coming off the bay. At any rate, he was unbothered by the temperature, and he sat for a while on the low stone wall that edged the part of the terrace that led to the lawns. The slope of hill meant he wasn't visible from the house, so he had a brief reprieve—not that anyone was talking to him anyway. Someone had left half a glass of champagne, too, and he lifted it tentatively, examining it. 

"It's excellent, I promise," said the familiar voice, and he set down the glass. 

"I don't doubt it," he said, arranging his face into pleasant lines. "Don't you need to be hosting your party?"

Bruce's lips quirked in a half-smile as he came down the steps. "They don't need me. No one will notice if I don't come back. In fact, that might be what they expect."

"Well, it's. . . a very lovely party."

"A nightmare, you mean."

"I was assigned," he said. "Sheldon Averett has bronchitis. He's Gotham metro, I'm just filling in."

"I know," Bruce said. He was silent for a moment. "Listen, it's colder than Hades' balls out here, but if you come with me to the kitchens I can get you some actual food to eat, and something to drink. Alfred can get you set up, and you can hide in there until the speeches."

"Thanks. I'm good here, though. Not that hungry, really."

Bruce just stood there, looking at him. "All right," he said. "Well. I've been looking for you, most of the night. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find someone, in there."

"Not really," he said with a smile. "Everything all right?"

"Sure. I have something I need to give you."

"Okay," he said warily. Bruce was setting a small box down on the stone wall. 

"Merry Christmas," he said.

Clark looked at the box. "Oh," he said. "Well. All right. Thanks."

"You can open it now."

"You know, I'm more of a Christmas morning kind of guy. I think I'll just hold off until then."

"Right," Bruce said softly. He stood there like he wanted to say more, and licked his lips. "Well. You might want to consider opening it now. In case you don't like it, is why I mention it. You might want to exchange it, something like that."

"I'm sure it's fine."

"You never know. Finding the right gift is hard. You're not an easy person to shop for."

"Can we stop please."

Bruce's face stilled. "Yes. I was just going to say, I was given a gift once," he said. "And I threw it away. Some things you don't get back." He was studying the stone paving. "Anyway. Merry Christmas, Clark."

He was walking up the steps then, a solid line of black in a tux whose price tag Clark didn't want to think about. The box's top was one of those that lifted right off. Well. He might as well look. 

He stared at the small, completely unbelievable object inside. He lifted it out with shaking fingers. It couldn't be what he thought it was. He set it in his palm. "My God," he said. And he laughed.

In his palm rested a perfect miniature of a tractor. Not just any tractor: Cora. Her name was painted on her bumper, in meticulous brushstrokes. It was her, exactly—a precise replica in two and a half inches, down to her perfect little tires and the delicate smooth tin of her sides. She even had Cora's coloring, the same faded forest green. "I don't believe it," he said. He was aware Bruce had stopped on the stairs, turned.

"There's, ah, a lever," Bruce said. Clark set the tiny Cora down on the wall and pushed the little lever on her underside. With a chug and a cough, her wheels began turning. His smile turned to a laugh of pure delight. Of course. He forgot, too often, that Bruce was a brilliant engineer. But this—this must have taken him weeks, even Bruce couldn't have—

"Was this what you were working on, when I was down in the cave?"

"It was."

"She's beautiful. Thank you. I don't know what to say. Although—" his laugh this time was short and slightly bitter. "I guess it's a reminder of the dangers of losing control, isn't it?"

Bruce's face flickered with something. "No, that wasn't—wasn't what I meant at all. If anything. . . if anything it's a reminder that you can't always be in control. That control is perhaps. . . overrated. No. Look." He rubbed at his forehead. "I don't know what it means. It's a gift. I thought you would like it. I thought—"

Clark was on the step beside him in a blink. "I love it."

Bruce released a breath, like he had been holding it. "I'm glad," he said. 

"That gift you threw away," Clark said. "It doesn't work that way."

"I know. I never asked for—"

"Maybe that's what you're doing wrong. Try asking."

Bruce's eyes on him were intent. "You can't mean that," he murmured. 

"What if I did?" 

"Clark, what I did—you can't just—"

"I can do whatever the hell I want. I'm. . . the goddamned Superman."

The whuff of Bruce's laugh against his skin. "Then please," Bruce whispered. "Please, can we just—" 

"Hush," Clark said, brushing lips against his, and Bruce obeyed. He held still for Clark's kiss, barely breathing, his hands in his pockets, eyes closed. 

"Clark," he whispered, as Clark gently continued brushing his lips against Bruce's jaw. 

"Yes."

"That thing you said I could never tell you again—"

"Shh." His lips were back on Bruce's, his fingers tipping Bruce's jaw upward a fraction. "Did you mean it when you said you could leave your party?"

Bruce cocked an eye at his watch. "Give me fifteen minutes," he said.

* * *

Clark rolled over and glanced at the clock across the room. Five-thirty a.m., and it was a Saturday. He burrowed deeper in the covers, tugging the blankets over both of them. Bruce's bed was wider, softer and more comfortable than he had thought a bed could ever be. Shadows danced across the room from the last of the fire crackling to embers in the fireplace. Bruce mumbled and rolled over, taking all the blankets with him. 

"Figures," Clark whispered. He sat up. And then, louder: "Oh no."

A tousled head. "'S wrong?"

Clark winced, put a hand on his back. "Nothing. Sorry. Go back to sleep."

"'M wake now. Tell me what's wrong." 

He scrubbed at his hair. "Argh. Dammit. It's just. . . I forgot the whole reason I was here. The speeches."

The head went back down. What scrap of blanket Clark had left was tugged away. "Is that all."

"Yeah, that's all. I'm about to get fired, is all."

Bruce yawned and rubbed at his face. "You don't really sleep much, do you? Not for long hours at a stretch, I mean. I mention it because some of us do."

"I'm sorry. Go back to sleep."

"'Mkay." Bruce was quiet for a minute, his back to Clark. For a bit Clark watched the steady breathing of that strong back. "You're not going to get fired."

"Oh really. It might surprise you to hear editors don't take kindly to reporters blowing off assignments."

Bruce rolled over and squinted at him. "You're not going to get fired because a, there are cameras and recording devices in every public room of this house. All we have to do is go down to the cave and call up the feed, and you have your story right there. And if for some reason that doesn't work, I call up Fleming and McDaven and get a copy of their remarks. Okay?"

"Oh." Clark thought about that one. "Okay, I guess I should have thought about that one."

Bruce harrumphed and rolled back over. Blankets on Clark's side of the bed were a distant memory; Bruce was mummified in about nine layers of them. Clark watched the fire crumble and the shadows lengthen. "What was b?" he asked, after a while.

This time the squint aimed his direction was deadly. "What?"

"You said I wasn't going to get fired because of a, implying the existence of a b. What was b?"

Bruce heaved a deep sigh and thumped his pillow. "This is where I give up on sleep, isn't it."

"Sorry. Go back to—"

"B is, you're not going to get fired because the new corporate owner of the _Planet_ would not allow it. I did a deal last week."

"You. . . what? You're telling me you own the _Planet_ now?"

Bruce shrugged, or what might have been a shrug, under the covers. "Wayne Corp does. It was a perfectly reasonable business move. The _Planet_ is surprisingly profitable, for a newspaper in this day."

"I don't believe it. You bought the _Planet_. Why the hell would you do that?"

"Because if the tractor didn't work, I was going to start showing up at your office, and I needed a reason to do that."

"Wait. You're serious?"

Bruce made the same indecipherable shrugging gesture. Clark shook his head. "Instead of just talking to me. Sometimes I really don't believe you. That was really your plan. You spent millions of dollars, rather than just say _I fucked up, can we try this again_."

"Well when you put it that way, it sounds silly."

Clark laughed softly. "Wow. I just. . . wow. For any straight line between two points, Bruce Wayne will find a way to burrow underground and triangulate."

"At least I let people sleep," Bruce said with a scowl. 

"And by the way, as the new owner of the _Planet_ , you should probably know that threatening Perry White will never work. If any of his editorial or staff decisions were second-guessed by suits in corporate, he would just quit."

"Integrity," Bruce said. "How annoying. You know what else is annoying?"

"Sorry. I'm really sorry. Just—go back to sleep. Really." He brushed a kiss on Bruce's hair, let his kiss drift down to the back of his neck. "I promise I'll shut up now." 

"Well. Now that I'm awake." He rolled to his back and pulled Clark's mouth to his. "I can think of one or two ways to get back to sleep."

"Yeah? I didn't wear you out?" 

"Mm. I'm good. Walking is over-rated anyway, who needs it."

"So you liked that." Clark was peeling back the layers of blanket, sliding inside them and next to Bruce's naked body. Arms came around him.

"You couldn't tell?"

"I don't know. It depends on your interpretation of _God don't stop_."

Bruce raised a knee to his groin, and Clark blocked him. They were wrestling, rolling back and forth. Clark wanted to laugh with joy. He pinned Bruce, both wrists pressed hard into the mattress. That same spike of heartbeat he had noticed before. "That's something else you like," he said. He positioned himself along Bruce's limbs so he could move none of them. 

"Come on," Bruce groaned. Their cocks pushed at each other. Their grind was silent. Clark released Bruce's wrists so he could get a grip on his hips. 

"Can I come on you," he gasped.

Bruce snaked an arm around his neck, pulled him in to husk in his ear. "On, in, around, whatever you need. Just—fuck, I—"

He watched Bruce bite his lip, rode the undulation of his body as he came. Bruce, he was discovering, bent his neck sharply back right as he was coming, in a beautiful arching abandon that made Clark's balls contract. His own pleasure was a slow riptide that pulled him under, and his orgasm washed over him in long lazy spurts. He wiped them and rolled them to another part of the bed. The vast geography of Bruce's bed made that sort of maneuvering possible. He pulled Bruce over to lie on top of him, a long heavy bat-blanket, and relaxed underneath him. 

"No," said Bruce after a few minutes. "That didn't work."

"Seemed to work okay to me," Clark murmured.

"I mean I'm not going back to sleep. Damn you to seven hells, Kent." He sighed and pushed himself off Clark, who only felt mildly guilty. "Six in the morning, and I'm awake. Too early to expect Alfred to have coffee. Dammit."

"Can you not be conscious without coffee?"

"I don't know, I've never tried."

"What time does Alfred normally bring coffee?"

"Sometime around noon, is generally when he makes his first attempt. I'll have to go make it myself. How hard can it be?"

Clark raised up. "What do you mean, how hard can it be. Have you never made coffee before?"

"Of course I've made coffee before. Just. . . not here. Alfred's kitchen is. . . precisely arranged. I'm not entirely sure where everything is. I'm sure I can figure it out."

Clark swung his legs over, pushing Bruce back onto the bed. "Oh no you don't. You stay here. I'll go make the coffee, which I bet is exactly what you were hoping I would say."

"All right then," Bruce said, the satisfaction evident in his voice. Clark rolled his eyes. His clothes from last night — well, most of them — were scattered around the room. 

"I will return with the coffee, never fear."

"Black, no—"

"Right, right." He waved his hand. "Because I've never noticed the way you take your coffee. All right, wish me luck." He clicked Bruce's bedroom door quietly behind him. Wayne Manor was still as a tomb, and the gray light of dawn was just beginning to penetrate the curtained windows.

He went silently down the corridor, crossing a smaller corridor on his way to the back stairs. He froze at the motion of an equally silent figure down the hallway that crossed his. He retreated into shadow. He had not been seen. Holy, holy hell.

Not one figure: two. Tim had emerged from his room now. Closing his door quietly. Kon was waiting for him. Kon bent to whisper something to Tim—no, that wasn't what he was doing at all. Holy shit. They were kissing. Tim braced his arm on the wall. Kon curled a hand on the back of Tim's head. 

"You have to get out of here," Tim said.

"I know. I know. Just—" They were kissing again. Tim disentangled them. He smiled at Kon, knotted their hands together. They walked down the corridor together, and the moment when they saw him standing there would have been almost comical if he hadn't been so angry.

"Going somewhere, boys?"

He had the satisfaction of watching Kon pale, from his hairline down. He saw him try to say something, try to formulate a response, and fail. Tim was glancing between them warily. "Let's start with where my parents think you were last night, before we even go anywhere else," he said, and he wasn't troubling to keep his voice down any more. "What lie did you tell them, about where you would be last night?"

"I didn't—that's not what—" Clark folded his arms and let his glare quell Kon into silence. "I'm spending the weekend with Kara, they said it was okay," he finished.

"Really. Funny, Ma and Pa didn't mention you were coming, and I talked to them just yesterday." 

"Well, maybe they forgot, I don't know. But they said last week that it would be—"

"Or maybe you're just lying to me."

Kon's pale vanished in a wash of red. "Are you calling me a liar?"

"I'm just pointing out the facts. Kara didn't mention you were coming, either."

"Maybe because I asked her not to," Kon said, and now his brows were rushing together in an angry line. "Who knows, maybe she'd like a little space without you breathing down her neck all the time."

"Watch it," he said sharply. "I don't see Kara anywhere around right now. Is she in Tim's room too?"

"She said it was fine if—"

" _Kara_ said it was fine," he repeated incredulously, aware his voice was rising. "Kara can't give you permission to do anything. I'm the one who gives you permission to do things, me or my parents, and high on the list of things you don't have permission to do is sneak around and—"

"The _list_ of things," Kon said, and Clark heard Tim's quiet "Kon," under his breath, but Kon shrugged him off. "The _list_ of things I don't have permission to do? That's not a list, it's an eight thousand page novel. You know what's shorter? The list of things I do have permission for, because I'm allowed to stay on some godforsaken farm in the middle of nowhere while Kara goes to the city and you live your life off somewhere, but guess what I'm allowed to do, I get to milk the fucking cows and go to 4H club meetings and youth group on Sunday nights, and I'm allowed to waste my life doing nothing while the two of you—"

" _Kon_ ," Tim said, sharper than before, and they both rounded on him. He was steady-eyed and had the audacity to look not the least bit embarrassed at the situation. "Clark, this isn't what it looks like."

"Is that so? Because what it looks like is the two of you sneaking off to have sex when you thought you could get away with it, that's what it looks like."

"Clark, we didn't—" Tim began, but Kon cut him off. 

"Don't tell him anything, he doesn't deserve to know anything. You're a hypocrite," he said, stepping closer to Clark, and Clark's fist itched to belt him. "A hypocrite, because don't act like you didn't come here for the exact same thing, don't act like you weren't fucking Bruce Wayne nine ways to Sunday right down the hall, when you—"

"That's none of your business, you disrespectful little—"

"Clark, please listen to—"

"Stay out of this!" he yelled at Tim.

"That's enough," said a quiet voice behind them, and they stilled. Bruce was standing there, in his bathrobe, taking in the scene. Clark wondered what he had heard. He felt vaguely ashamed of his raised voice and the finger he was pointing at Tim's face. 

"Tim, go back to your room, please," Bruce said. Tim looked at him for a minute, and whatever silent communication passed between them Clark was not privy to, but it was evidently enough for Tim. He turned on a dime and retreated to his room, with a small concerned glance at Kon. 

Kon's breathing was loud in the hall, his face still flushed. "Conner, will you do me a favor," Bruce said evenly. "Someone in this house is going to bring me some coffee. Will you go downstairs to the kitchens and see if you can get some started?"

Kon mumbled something and brushed past Clark, who watched him go. "I don't know that I would trust him with coffee," Clark said, when he had rounded the corner.

"Never speak to my son like that again."

Clark dropped his eyes, acknowledging the justice of that. "You're. . . right. I'm sorry. I'll apologize to Tim."

"And as for trusting Conner to make coffee, you wouldn't trust him to tie his shoes, which is exactly the trouble," Bruce said. "Did you even ask them what was going on, or listen to their answers?"

"It was obvious enough," he said shortly.

"Maybe, maybe not. Clark, how you speak to your own son is entirely your business, but I would recommend—"

"He's not my son," Clark said.

Bruce arched a brow. "Whose son is he, then? Or does he not deserve a father?" He studied Clark, who said nothing. "Suit yourself, then. But if you're not going to be his father, he might just decide to go looking for one. Do you really want him knocking on _that_ door?"

Clark rubbed at his forehead. Surely he hadn't meant to raise his voice like that to Kon; surely he had better control of his temper than that, surely he. . . "I'm not really cut out for this," he said. 

"No one is."

"If he could just. . . be more like Kara, I think I'd have an easier time of it. I can understand her better, somehow—she at least listens, occasionally."

"Kara listens to nobody, only you can't see that, because she is a pure Kryptonian—a link to the past you want to, would give anything to remember. Kon is just a link to embarrassment and pain. So nothing he does is good enough, and you're contantly irritated at his very presence. You think he doesn't sense that? That boy would walk through fire for one word from you, and all you see is some annoyance, some half-breed abomination. Get better at this, Clark, and get better at it fast. The price of failure is too high. Trust me on that one."

Clark leaned against the wall and tipped his head back, shutting his eyes. He replayed the last five minutes in his head, wincing at every over-loud caricature of clumsy, angry fathering he had just parroted. "Teach me how to do this," he said hoarsely.

Bruce snorted. "I'm no source of wisdom. The only reason I know anything about being a father is that I've failed more profoundly at it than you ever will."

Clark opened his eyes. Bruce was standing there in his quilted silk bathrobe, unshaven, hair gloriously askew, looking more beautiful than anything he had ever seen. He knew what Bruce was thinking of when he talked about failing, knew that he was thinking of Jason. Clark had never knelt in the snow and screamed while he held his son's dead body in his arms. Clark had never stood by his own son's grave. Some part of Bruce had died then, too—some part Clark would never see again, some impulse to joy, some last part of his youthfulness that had finally and forever died. Getting Jason back hadn't changed that, hadn't altered the crucible of those five years. Bruce would forever see his inability to save Jason that night as his most profound failure, and nothing Clark could ever say would erase that. Things like that chiseled your soul into certain shapes, and you couldn't rub the stone back the way it had been before. 

He found that Bruce was in his arms, or maybe he was in Bruce's. They were scruffy and unwashed and folded around each other in an upstairs hallway. He had just screwed things up unbelievably with Kon, he was probably in danger of losing his job, and he was sleeping with a man who elevated "emotionally unavailable" into Ukrainian sand art. It was possible he had never been happier in his life. 

"It was easier when we could wake up in a barn, just us and the cows," he sighed.

"Mm hm."

"This is. . . a lot of life to deal with before seven in the morning."

"Mm hm."

"I am starting to see the wisdom behind that once-a-year-on-the-farm idea. I may have been too hasty." 

"Hmph."

"That all you're going to say?"

"Seven words," Bruce said in his ear. Clark nuzzled and kissed his way around Bruce's neck, trying to figure it out. 

"Okay, I give up," he said.

"I love you, now get me coffee," Bruce whispered, and Clark laughed. He tipped that arrogant mouth to his and kissed it.


	6. Epilogue

If he had thought Bruce's bed was amazing, his shower was from another galaxy. It was wide enough to stable that bay mare in, for one thing, and had six different nozzles, all of them wide as your hand, shooting, at a jetforce that should have peeled off human skin, water that had obviously been heated in the depths of Mauna Loa. Bruce just stood under the nozzles, eyes closed, luxuriating, and that was a visual Clark was going to be enjoying for some time to come. He let Clark soap him, caress him. . . and at some point in the shower Clark became grateful for the various handholds, because he was not yet at the point where he could kiss Bruce and not have it go places really damn fast. 

It didn't occur to him until they were out and drying off, until he had seized the warm fluffy towel and begun drying Bruce, kissing his shoulder, tucking the towel proprietarily around his waist, that Bruce's bedroom and bathroom were kind of made for this sort of activity. He was hardly the first to—he suppressed that thought and erased the shadow from his face, because jealousy would get him nowhere with Bruce. And was meaningless anyway. Plenty of other people had seen parts of Bruce, maybe even large parts; only he had been in that bed while knowing the whole of it, the whole of him. He started kissing the other shoulder. 

"Aren't you going to get that?"

"Hm? Oh." It was his cell, buzzing in the pocket of his discarded pants. "Nope." He resumed his attentions, because really, the skin behind Bruce's ear had not been kissed enough. There was the more insistent buzz of the text alert.

"Just read it already."

He sighed and picked up his phone. He scrolled through the text and tried to keep his eyebrows from elevating. 

"Everything all right?"

"Ah. . . yeah. Sure. Everything's. . ." He couldn't help the grin from spreading across his face. "It's Ma. She's just, ah. . . really excited about Christmas."

"That reminds me," Bruce said, opening his toiletries cabinet. Clark caught a glimpse of Penhaligon bottles and boars-hair brushes. "Committee meeting was last night. I was going to check in this morning and see how it went, if she pulled off the coup."

Clark stared at him in some astonishment. The idea that Bruce might have stayed in touch with his mother, that they might have communicated without him, was unsettling. Briefly he wondered if they would have talked about him, but he knew the answer to that, knew Bruce wouldn't have. Still. It was an uncomfortable thought, made even more uncomfortable by the possibility that Bruce knew more of what was going on in his mother's life than he did. Bruce was foaming his shaving cream in a glass, laying out his razor.

"You don't get Alfred to do that for you?"

Bruce shot him a look. "Shaving can be pleasant, as you'd know if your morning routine was more than heat-visioning your beard off with a mirror while eating a pop-tart. I don't care what planet you're from, that can't be good for your skin."

Clark looped arms around him from the back, watching him in the mirror. "You're kind of a dandy," he murmured.

"It's all just for show."

"Mm hm. Well, you're pretty committed."

"Anything worth doing. What did your mother say?"

Clark smiled into his shoulder. "Believe it or not, she wants you to come for Christmas."

Bruce arched a brow. "Not really possible, not with the family here."

"I know. But she has it all worked out, because she's Martha Kent. Her solution is, she's inviting everyone. She just texted me the plans for where everybody's going to sleep: Tim in Kon's room—" he felt Bruce's snort at that one— "yeah right, I'm sure they'd like that, and Alfred in the little sewing room where you slept last time, and Damian on the sofa in the downstairs den."

"What about me?"

Clark picked up his phone with a sigh. "She says she made a special trip to Ikea. See for yourself." He clicked open the pic she had sent along with it, and held it in front of Bruce's face. He watched Bruce squint at it, frown. "It's my bedroom," Clark said. "Or at least, it was, before she wedged that giant monstrosity in it. Is there even room for any furniture in there anymore? Where the hell is all my stuff?"

"Huh." Bruce examined with one eye the enormous new bed in Clark's room, and the new duvet and pillows. He was continuing to shave, in long careful strokes. "That's the Svelvik, I believe. Good choice."

"Excuse me?"

"But she went with the Penningblad comforter. Somber, but tasteful. I like it."

"You're scaring me the hell out of me right now."

"I told you, I spent a lot of time in Ikea."

Clark laughed. Bruce frowned at him in the mirror. "Stop, you're jostling."

"Sorry. Poor Ma. I'll let her down easy, about Christmas."

"Why would you do that?" Bruce was giving a last swipe, and running a critical hand over his jaw. 

"Well, I don't want to hurt her feelings. I'll make something up about your business, something like that."

"No need." Bruce dabbed at his face with the handtowel. "Messrs Wayne, Drake, and Pennyworth gratefully accept her kind invitation for the holidays, and respectfully inquire what they may bring." 

"Oh no."

"Hm?"

"Oh no. No no NO you don't. That's just—that's insane. You, me, Kon, Kara, Tim, Damian—for the love of God, _Damian_ —and Alfred under the same roof with my parents? Bruce, you have got to be insane."

Bruce was quietly chuckling as he folded his towel. Something in Clark's face was apparently giving him great amusement. "I see nothing terrible in the idea. A little flexibility required on everybody's part, sure. But the vacation will do us good, and exposure to a little farm life might be just the thing for Damian."

"Bruce, you can't possibly—what about Dick? You can't leave Dick alone for Christmas," he said, grasping at straws. 

"Dick's going to be spending the holiday in Boston, with Barbara's mother. It's the sort of thing you do, when you're a good boyfriend. I'm just trying to live up to his example."

Clark groaned. Although. . . Bruce had more or less just appropriated the word 'boyfriend' to describe himself. Playfully meant, sure, but probably with half an eye to gauging Clark's reaction, too. That was just how Bruce worked. He tugged on the knot of Bruce's towel and pulled him in for a kiss. "I think maybe we should talk about this," he murmured against the clean-shaven mouth, which only curved in a wicked smile.

Bruce's arm pulled him in closer. He wasn't wearing a towel, and the scratchiness of Bruce's towel felt interesting and not at all unpleasant, rubbing against him. He let the kiss get a little messier.

"Insatiable," Bruce whispered.

"Complaining?"

"Did I say that?"

"About this Christmas idea," Clark said, softly. Bruce's smile was deeper and even wickeder than before. There was a quick brush of kiss on the side of his face. 

"Saddle up, Ponyman." And he strode out of the bathroom, but not before delivering something to Clark's naked backside that was most definitely and undeniably a slap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been trying to figure out what sort of thing I should say about where my various character ideas come from, because what I carry around in my head is such an amalgam, and I'm sure more literate readers than I are all head-shaky at me. I think the mix most obvious in this story — Kon, for me, is the Kon I met in Young Justice rather than the Kon of the comics, but his relationship and closeness with Tim is much closer to comics canon than animation. Tim is entirely a creature of the comics, in my head. Kara I know (and love) almost exclusively from "Apocalypse," never having read any Supergirl comics other than panels here and there. And as for the timeframe in which this story is set, it is some magical halcyon time that might never have existed, in canon: when Dick is a young adult, Jason is back as Red Hood but not reconciled to Bruce, Tim is late-teens and Damian is a relatively new addition to the household. It may very well be that all of those variables never exist together, in canon, or at best only for a week or so, but in my head that is how I see them all. In truth I don't see Damian's death, and I don't write about it or acknowledge it, because I meant what I said about the changes that works in a person. I think Bruce withstood—barely—Jason's death, and rebuilt himself, though not like before. No human, no writer, no person of compassion, could possibly expect a man to live through that twice. I won't do that to Bruce, and honestly I don't see how he could ever form close attachments again; Bruce would be such a broken shell of himself that there wouldn't be anything left of him, to have those kinds of relationships. So, yeah, halcyon days.
> 
> Also, no, there are no plans for a Christmas sequel. If anyone wants to write it and play in this universe, have at it!


End file.
